Hong Kong - Six workers from Hong Kong hospital morgues were being investigated Wednesday for allegedly taking bribes from funeral directors in return for giving corpses special treatment.

They are accused of accepting monthly payments of up to 130 US dollars to speed up funeral arrangements and allow funeral directors to collect them outside normal hours.

The workers also allegedly dressed the corpses in shrouds and prepared them for funerals, a role usually performed in funeral parlours, investigators claim.

Jakarta - Police in Indonesia's Central Java province have arrested a shop owner after 14 people died after drinking a homemade alcohol brew he sold, reports said Tuesday.

The victims - all young men - died after drinking a concoction of 90 per cent alcohol, ginseng, vanilla extract and fermented tea, the Koran Tempo daily quoted police chief Benone Louhenapassy in the provincial capital Semarang as saying.

Another person who consumed the drink was critically ill in hospital, the daily said.

Manila - The Philippine armed forces on Tuesday ignored a demand by Islamic militants holding three International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) staff on a southern island to stop military operations to rescue the hostages.

Armed forces chief of staff General Alexander Yano said there was no halt in military operations to rescue Swiss Andreas Notter, Italian Eugenio Vagni and Filipino Mary Jean Lacaba, who were seized last week on Jolo island, 1,000 kilometres south of Manila.

The three hostages, who were abducted after visiting the provincial jail on Jolo, are being held by al-Qaeda-linked Muslim Abu Sayyaf rebels in the jungles of Indanan town.

Sana'a, Yemen  - Army and security forces surrounded on Tuesday a remote mountain village in southern Yemen where armed tribesmen are holding hostage a German oil expert and two local engineers, local security sources said.

The sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that armoured personnel carriers and patrol vehicles laid siege to the Khubar Laqmoush village in the south-eastern province of Shabwa.

Hong Kong - Police in Hong Kong were Tuesday questioning 27 suspects after smashing a triad gang operation that recruited young members in school playgrounds.

The arrests came after dozens of cases in which youngsters were approached in playgrounds in Hong Kong schools and threatened with violence if they did not join triad gangs.

Youngsters acted as recruiters and teenagers signed up for gangs in school playgrounds and games arcades were made to pay 3.60 Hong Kong dollars (46 US cents) as a joining fee.

Hong Kong - A Hong Kong police detective was Tuesday beginning a seven-year jail term after being convicted of raping an 18-year-old girl.

Crime squad officer Choi Chai-him, 33, met the teenager over the internet and lured her to his home with the promise of downloading games onto her portable PlayStation games console.

The court was told the married policeman began molesting her and when she resisted, took her to his bedroom and raped her, Hong Kong's High Court was told.