VIENNA, Austria — A woman who went missing in 1984 was found by police over the weekend and told investigators that she had been held by her father in a cellar, where she was repeatedly raped and gave birth to at least six children, police said Sunday.
Authorities said that the father may have told acquaintances and relatives that his daughter had joined a cult and disappeared.
Franz Polzer, head of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs, told reporters that the father, 73, had been taken into custody. Police said the father and his wife had been raising three of their daughter’s children. The other three grew up in the cellar.
“We are being confronted with an unfathomable crime,” Interior Minister Guenther Platter said.
All six children, their mother and the suspect’s wife are in psychiatric care, police said. DNA tests are expected to determine whether the suspect is the father.
South Korea: Torch relay clashes
Chinese students clashed with anti-Beijing demonstrators at the Olympic torch relay Sunday in Seoul, throwing rocks and punches at the latest stop on the flame’s troubled round-the-world journey. A North Korean defector tried to set himself on fire to halt the relay, where thousands of police guarded the flame from protesters. Police said five people were arrested.
Britain: Strike shuts oil pipeline
Hundreds of workers at Scotland’s only oil refinery on Sunday began a 48-hour strike that has forced BP PLC to shut a pipeline system that delivers almost a third of Britain’s North Sea oil. BP said it had completed the closure when 1,200 workers at the Grangemouth refinery in central Scotland walked off the job.
Morocco: Factory owner detained
Police detained the owner and manager of a Casablanca mattress factory that went up in flames, killing at least 55 people, a police official said Sunday amid accusations of poor safety standards and locked doors that trapped workers. Rescue workers found one more body Sunday and a sniffer dog was seen uncovering body parts a day after the blaze at the factory. Six people remained hospitalized.
China: 66 die in train collision
State media says the death toll in a pre-dawn passenger train collision in eastern China has risen to at least 66. Xinhua News Agency said on its Web site that today’s crash outside the city of Zibo in Shandong province injured at least 247 people, 70 of them seriously. It quoted witnesses as saying a passenger train from Beijing to coastal Qingdao city derailed and hit another train.
D.C.: Bush claims more interrogation latitude
CIA interrogation techniques otherwise prohibited by international law might be legal in the face of an impending terrorist attack, the Justice Department says in newly disclosed letters to Capitol Hill. The letters show that the Bush administration is taking the position that it has latitude in dealing with restrictions from the Supreme Court and Congress designed to limit how far interrogators in the U.S. intelligence community can go. Among the issues is a Geneva Conventions ban on outrages upon personal dignity, a provision the Supreme Court ruled in 2006 applies to prisoners in American captivity.
California: Eyes peeled for shark
Beachgoers looking to escape triple-digit temperatures inland stayed cautiously along the water’s edge on Sunday as 17 miles of beaches remained closed following a deadly shark attack near San Diego. There was no sign of the shark, believed to be a great white about 15 feet long, that killed triathlete David Martin on Friday. Beaches were expected to reopen today.
Hundreds flee L.A. foothills wildfire
Firefighters gained ground Sunday against an early season wildfire that slowly chewed its way through dense brush, forcing more than 1,000 people from homes in the foothills northeast of Pasadena. About 500 firefighters attacked the 400-acre fire, aided by two helicopters and water-dropping air tankers, said a spokeswoman for the city of Sierra Madre. No homes had burned. Crews had the fire 30 percent contained by Sunday evening.
Nevada: Quakes still rattling Reno
Dozens of minor earthquakes shook Reno on Sunday as a sequence of temblors entered its third month and prompted some frazzled residents to leave their homes. More than 150 aftershocks have been recorded on the western edge of the city after a magnitude 4.7 quake hit Friday night. The strongest aftershock Sunday measured 3 and was recorded shortly before 11 a.m.
Texas: Continental Airlines quashes United merger talk
Continental Airlines Inc. said Sunday it would not pursue a combination with another carrier right away, a surprising move after weeks of growing speculation that it would join with United Airlines to create the world’s biggest airline. Continental’s decision stunned United’s parent, UAL Corp., which had been in advanced talks with Continental and expected to complete a deal by early May.
From Herald news services
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