World in brief

N. Korea struggles to care for victims

DANDONG, China - Injured children lay on filing cabinets as an overcrowded North Korean hospital struggled to cope without enough beds or medicine for hundreds of victims from last week's train explosion, an aid worker who visited the facility said Sunday.

Sinuiju Provincial Hospital, just across the border from China, was treating 360 people injured in the blast, said Tony Banbury, Asia regional director for the U.N. World Food Program. More than 60 percent of the victims there were children, he said.

"They clearly lack the ability to care for all the patients," Banbury said.

Thursday's huge explosion in the town of Ryongchon, fed by oil and chemicals, killed 161 people and injured at least 1,300, officials said.

The death toll rose by seven Sunday, but it was unclear whether the higher number reflected new fatalities or simply freshly confirmed casualties. Aid agencies didn't say whether they expected the number to increase.

STOKENHAM, England - Sixty years ago, 749 U.S. soldiers and sailors were killed when their D-day landing practice was attacked by German torpedo boats off the south coast of England.

It was one of the least-known Allied disasters of World War II. On Sunday, at St. Michael's and All Angels church in the coastal village of Stokenham, American and British veterans attended a memorial service for the men of Exercise Tiger, who died in the early morning darkness of April 28, 1944.

VATICAN CITY - Pope John Paul II added six more people to the ranks of Catholics on the path to possible sainthood Sunday, beatifying 19th and 20th century Europeans and Latin Americans at a ceremony in St. Peter's Square.

Among the six was a paralyzed lay woman, Alexandrina Maria da Costa of Portugal, who the Vatican says lived the last 13 years of her life eating only the bread and wine of Communion.

With the six, representing Poland, Colombia, Mexico, Italy, Spain and Portugal, John Paul has beatified 1,330 people during his 25-year pontificate, more than all his predecessors over the past 500 years combined. Beatification is the last formal step before possible sainthood.

Honored were August Czartoryski (1858-1893) of Poland, a prince who became a Salesian priest; Laura Montoya (1874-1949) of Colombia, who founded the Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Mary; Maria Guadalupe Garcia Zavala (1878-1963) of Mexico, co-founder of the Congregation of the Servants of St. Margaret Mary and the Poor; Nemesia Valle (1847-1916) of Italy, a nun of the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of St. Giovanna Antida Thouret; Eusebia Palomino Yenes (1899-1935) of Spain, a nun of the Institute of the Daughters of Mary, Help of Christians; and da Costa (1904-1955), who became a lay Salesian cooperator.

BEIJING - China announced Sunday that it was investigating four fresh suspected SARS cases in its capital and ordered an affected southern province to gird for a coming holiday when millions of Chinese will be traveling.

All of the new suspected cases have been traced back to a single patient, the government said, suggesting the problem was not a general outbreak. The latest cases brought the total in China for the past week to two confirmed and six suspected.

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