5Th Guatemalan Suspect Held In Rape Of U.S. Students On Bus

GUATEMALA CITY - A fifth man was picked up for questioning yesterday, and police are hunting for two others in the rape of five U.S. college students in a daylight ambush last week.

Police are trying to determine whether Julio Antonio Barrientos Godinez was a member of the gang that held up a bus carrying American students Friday, prosecutor Joel Majia said.

Barrientos, 49, also known as "El Chicharron" or The Pork Rind, was picked up on the east side of Guatemala City, Majia said. Police searched his home and found 15 watches and eight cameras, possibly stolen.

National Police chief Angel Conte Cojulun said at least five warrants were pending for Barrientos' arrest. He is wanted in connection with several thefts, armed robberies and muggings.

Thirteen students on an anthropology tour from St. Mary's College in Maryland were robbed at gunpoint, and five of the young women were raped, provoking outrage in the United States and calls in Guatemala to end surging lawlessness.

The student group's pink-and-white bus was forced off a highway into a sugar cane field by gunmen riding in two pickup trucks, 45 miles southwest of Guatemala City.

Two suspects were arrested soon after the attack and provided names of their accomplices.

111 may have gotten fluid linked to `mad-cow' disease

HONG KONG - More than 100 patients in Hong Kong were given a fluid used in medical testing that may have been contaminated with a human variant of "mad-cow disease," hospital authorities said today.

A Briton who donated blood used to make the fluid has died of the brain-wasting Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, Hong Kong radio reported.

Ko Wing-man, deputy director of the Hospital Authority, said 111 patients in six Hong Kong hospitals were injected with the fluid between July and December, the radio said.

The fluid was given to patients before lung and stomach scans, the radio reported.

Chinese earthquake puts cracks in the Great Wall

BEIJING - A strong earthquake that killed 50 people in northern China earlier this month left many cracks in China's Great Wall, state media reported today.

The magnitude 6.2 quake on Jan. 10 left cracks in the wall in Shangyi, Zhangbei and Wanquan counties of Hebei province, the official Xinhua News Agency quoted He Yong, the director of the Beijing Administration of Cultural Relics, as saying.

Notorious Taiwan criminal gets five death sentences

TAIPEI, Taiwan - A court today gave five death sentences to one of Taiwan's most notorious criminals, a serial killer-rapist who tried to avoid arrest by kidnapping a South African diplomat and his family.

Chen Chin-hsin was sentenced to death by the Panchiao District Court in Taipei for four killings, three kidnappings and 18 rapes.

Police began hunting for Chen after the April kidnapping and murder of a popular entertainer's teenage daughter, a high-profile case that prompted a public outcry over Taiwan's soaring crime rate and forced the interior minister to resign. After six months on the run, Chen entered South African military attache E.G.M. Alexander's home on Nov. 18 and took five family members hostage.

Three Matisse paintings found damaged in Rome

ROME - Three Matisse paintings - including one on loan from Washington's National Galley and another from Russia's Hermitage museum - were found damaged today at Rome's Capitoline Museum.

Museum official Massimiliano De Persio said the National Gallery's "Pianist and Checker Players" and "The Japanese Woman," from a private collection, were damaged.

The ANSA news agency said an inspection showed that a third painting was damaged, "Zorah Standing," from the Hermitage.

Blizzard socks Romania, snarls Vienna traffic

BUCHAREST, Romania - Heavy snowstorms cut power to thousands of people in central and east Europe and caused chaos to road and River Danube traffic, authorities said today.

The blizzards knocked out power lines to 100,000 households in Croatia yesterday and to more than 450 villages across Romania, where meteorologists predicted more snow over the weekend.

In Austria, troops were called out to help dig out motorists on snowbound roads near Vienna, where more than 200 cars were stranded overnight, the Austrian automobile association OeAMTC said, although rail and air traffic were not affected.