In the World

WINNIPEG, Manitoba - A man accused of beheading and cannibalizing a fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus in Canada apologized to police when arrested and begged officers to kill him.

The details emerged yesterday as Vince Li pleaded not guilty at the start of his murder trial. "I'm sorry. I'm guilty. Please kill me," Li said, according to an agreed statement of facts read in court.

The Chinese immigrant is accused of the second-degree murder last summer of Tim McLean, a 22-year-old carnival worker who was killed in what passengers described as a random, horrific attack. Li's lawyers are not disputing that he killed McLean, but they will argue Li was mentally ill.

As horrified passengers fled the bus, Li severed McLean's head and displayed it, witnesses said. A police report said an officer at the scene saw the attacker hacking off pieces of the body and eating them. - AP

COLOGNE, Germany - People inside Cologne's six-story city archive building fled in panic as the structure groaned and then collapsed yesterday. All managed to escape, but police said three people were missing in nearby damaged buildings.

Cologne has archive material going back over centuries, including manuscripts by communist pioneers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and documents related to German writer Heinrich Boell.

It was not immediately clear what caused the building to collapse.

Work was being done on a new subway line under the street on which the building stood. The roof of the subway construction site also collapsed, but officials said they did not believe anyone was trapped there. - AP

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - An Argentine court has ordered a second seizure of property owned by a former cultural attache at Iran's embassy in Buenos Aires who is sought for his alleged role in a 1994 bombing.

A judge has approved prosecutor Alberto Nisman's motion to seize five more buildings owned by Mohsen Rabbani due to his alleged role in a bombing that flattened a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people.

The judge approved the seizure of six buildings in November. Nisman told the Associated Press that the action was part of a survivor's suit for $1 million in damages.

If Rabbani is convicted, his property would be auctioned and the money would go to the victims of the attack. His whereabouts are unknown.

- AP

Radovan Karadzic refused yesterday to enter pleas to a new streamlined indictment containing two genocide charges and nine other counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes. The former Bosnian Serb leader told the Yugoslav war-crimes tribunal that the U.N. court "does not have the right to try me."

A top Mexican cabinet official, Transportation and Communications Secretary Luis Tellez, resigned yesterday after someone threatened to ruin his career by leaking secretly recorded conversations.