In the World

OLPE, Germany - A woman, 44, was arrested on suspicion of killing her own babies after her grown children found the bodies of three infants stashed in the family's freezer while looking for a frozen pizza, police said yesterday.

Police confirmed the grisly find Sunday night in Wenden, near Olpe, in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia after the woman turned herself in, officials said. The infants are believed to have been born alive, but authorities were awaiting autopsy results.

The woman; her husband, 47; and three adult children have lived in the town since 1984. The corpulent woman apparently concealed the three pregnancies, believed to have been in the 1980s, not only from neighbors but also her own family.

- AP

GUATEMALA CITY - Guatemalan Attorney General Baudilio Portillo said yesterday that 2,286 pending foreign adoptions had been put on hold for at least a month while officials review related paperwork.

Additional DNA testing could be required to ensure that babies are being given up by their birth mothers and not handed over by intermediaries, said adoptions council chief Elizabeth de Larios. Her council was created in January to overhaul an adoptions system plagued by fraud and corruption.

Guatemala has been the No. 2 source of adoptive babies to U.S. parents after China.

- AP

TAIPEI, Taiwan - Taiwan's vice premier quit the ruling party yesterday to take responsibility for a diplomatic bungle that cost the government millions of dollars.

Chiou I-jen's announcement came three days after he acknowledged arranging for the Foreign Ministry to transfer $29.8 million to a Taiwanese man acting as intermediary in a deal to try to get Papua New Guinea to officially recognize Taiwan.

Both the man and the money have since disappeared. "I feel deeply ashamed in the face of my country and people," Chiou said in a statement. The missing funds were intended as economic aid for Papua New Guinea, once it agreed to switch diplomatic ties from China to Taiwan. The effort was abandoned in late 2006, when Taiwan concluded Papua New Guinea was unlikely to do so.

- AP

Amazon region

rescue workers yesterday found two more bodies near the site where a boat ferrying people from a religious festival sank by a remote Brazilian jungle town. The discovery raised the death toll to 17, with dozens still missing.

Egypt's parliament

endorsed a government bill to raise taxes and fuel prices less than a week after President Hosni Mubarak announced a 30 percent salary increase for all government employees. The debate lasted six hours and passed after loud protests.

Belarus accused

the United States of recruiting citizens into a spy ring aimed at undermining the former Soviet republic. The U.S. State Department said the allegation was "ridiculous" and was considering whether to close its embassy in Minsk.

Lebanon began

a probe into allegations that the extremist group Hezbollah set up surveillance cameras near the Beirut airport to monitor the movement of anti-Syria Lebanese politicians and foreign dignitaries.