Hanoi  - Police in Hanoi have arrested a man found transporting a butchered tiger carcass, a police official said Thursday.

Nguyen Van Thanh, deputy chief of police in Hanoi's Dong Da District, said officers from his department and from Hanoi's Environmental Police arrested a 30-year-old man Wednesday as he was driving his car.

Inside the car, police found a trunk containing most of the carcass of an 80-kilogram tiger. One of the tiger's flanks was missing.

Manila - A Filipino-Chinese businessman and his 10-year-old daughter were abducted by unidentified gunmen who exchanged fire with police during their getaway in a southern Philippine city, police said Thursday.

Wilson Tan, 50, and his daughter Jennifer were seized at gunpoint Wednesday from their house in Cotabato City, 960 kilometres south of Manila, said Senior Superintendent Willie Dangane, the city police director.

Police officers chased the kidnappers after they forced the father and daughter into a get-away vehicle, Dangane said.

A firefight erupted between the officers and the gunmen but the kidnappers were able to flee and later burned the get-away vehicle before they boarded a pumpboat, the superintendent said.

Hong Kong  - Police seized a shipment of cocaine valued at 1.3 million US dollars smuggled from South America in cocoa boxes, officers said Wednesday.

Agents arrested six men and seized 12 kilograms of cocaine in the raid Tuesday which followed a two-month surveillance operation against an international drug trafficking syndicate.

Police and customs officers kept tabs on a consignment of cocaine flown to Hong Kong from Ecuador via Panama and Amsterdam and hidden inside 20 boxes of coca powder.

Sydney  - A second Australian was charged Wednesday with arson following forest fires north of Melbourne that claimed over 201 lives, razed 1,830 homes and left 7,500 homeless.

Police allege the 38-year-old man was spotted Tuesday throwing lighted cigarettes into dry grass near Myrtleford, where two people died in the February 7 blazes.

The fire brigade extinguished the fire and the man, whose name was withheld, was charged with two counts of arson.

Earlier this week a Melbourne court identified Brendan Sokaluk as the 39-year-old man charged over a forest fire in his hometown of Churchill that killed 21 people and burned out 36,000 hectares.

Kuala Lumpur  - A Myanmar refugee in Malaysia discovered three members of his family dead with stab wounds at their home in Kuala Lumpur, reports said Wednesday.

His 1-year-old daughter was spared by the killers, and found crying over her mother's body, the Star daily reported.

The victims, a 39-year old woman, her 7-year old daughter and their 22-year old relative, all UN-sponsored refugees, had been living in Malaysia for the past three years.

Hong Kong  - Hong Kong police on Wednesday were investigating a school brawl involving 50 students after a video of the melee was uploaded onto the YouTube website.

Tens of thousands of people have viewed the 2.5-minute clip, which shows two groups of teenage students attacking each other on the grounds of a housing estate in the city.

The video appears to have been filmed from the window of a high- rise apartment block overlooking the scene of the brawl, which took place Monday in the inner-city Ho Man Tin district.