Wellington  - New Zealand police said Friday they did not know whether one of their men shot dead an innocent driver, or if he was the victim of a gunman who had led them on a 40-minute chase through Auckland suburbs at up to 160 kilometres an hour.

Another motorist was shot and injured in the drama that ended on a city motorway when the gunman crashed and tried to hijack another vehicle to escape pursuing police.

Zamboanga City, Philippines - Three Filipino public school teachers were seized Friday by unidentified gunmen off a southern Philippine city, a regional police chief said.

Chief Superintendent Angelo Sunglao said the victims were riding a passenger boat near Zamboanga City, 875 kilometres south of Manila, when the gunmen seized them Friday morning.

Sunglao said the gunmen who were riding on a separate motorized boat, boarded the passenger vessel and seized the three victims.

Nairobi/Bamako  - Four Europe

Kuala Lumpur - A Malaysian taxi driver was accused of raping a customer several times, then demanding she pay her fare after he took her home, a news report said Friday.

The suspect was accused of picking up a 28-year-old clerk late Tuesday and driving her to a secluded area in the central state of Selangor before handcuffing her and raping her several times, the New Straits Times daily said.

Several hours later, the man drove the woman home but demanded that she pay the fare on the meter.

Vienna - An Austrian court is set to try Josef Fritzl from March 16 on charges that he incarcerated his daughter for 24 years and murdered one of the seven children she bore him, the prosecution office at the court in Sankt Poelten confirmed Thursday.

In April 2008, the case came to light when Fritzl's daughter Elisabeth, 42, managed to bring one of her daughters to a hospital.

The suspect had kept his daughter and her children locked up in a dungeon built beneath his house in Amstetten in the province of Lower Austria.

Singapore