Waiting good-naturedly for as much as half a day in traffic jams and a parking lot, tens of thousands of people filed past Ronald Reagan's flag-draped casket in an outpouring that forced organizers to extend the viewing period by four hours. More than 106,000 mourners had passed by the coffin after viewing began at noon on Monday, library officials said. The nation's 40th president died on Saturday at age 93. The flow of mourners was interrupted briefly when Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry arrived. Standing before the casket, he made the sign of the cross, placed his hand over his heart, then left.
■ Gabon
Plane crashes in shallows
A passenger plane carrying at least 29 people plunged into shallow waters just off the coast of Gabon on Tuesday killing many of those on board, officials from the aircraft's operator said. A French army helicopter helped rescue 10 people, who were taken to hospital in the central African country's capital Libreville. Divers tried to reach others trapped inside the Gabon Express plane, just hundreds of metres from the shore. Local fishermen were also helping. The plane was travelling from Libreville to Franceville in the southeast of the former French colony, when it developed engine trouble soon after taking off.
■ United States
Enron wife to federal prison
The wife of former Enron Corp finance chief Andrew Fastow must report to a federal prison in downtown Houston rather than the minimum-security prison camp where she wanted to serve her yearlong sentence for helping her husband hide ill-gotten income. US District Judge David Hittner has ordered Lea Fastow to surrender at the prison on Saturday. She pleaded guilty on May 6 to a misdemeanor tax crime and Hittner sentenced her to the maximum of one year in prison. Last month Hittner rejected her request that he recommend the Federal Bureau of Prisons place her at a minimum-security prison camp for women in Bryan, northwest of Houston.
■ United Kingdom
`New' disease assessed
British health watchdogs were on Tuesday night asked to speed up an official assessment of the risk to humans from a possible new cattle disease as it emerged that 21 cows have been investigated for unexplained viral conditions in the last 10 years. UK government officials appealed for "a sense of proportion" about the investigations which were sparked by vets' unease about the most recent case, in Cumbria, northern England, at the end of last year, in which a young cow fell ill from a disease which damaged white brain matter and led to paralysis and death. An alert will be published this week in the Veterinary Record so that vets working for farmers can look out for similar cases.
■ Bosnia
Compensation after 28 years
A compensation claim filed 28 years ago has brought civil servants in a southern Bosnian town out in a cold sweat after it emerged the pay-out could clear out the town's coffers. The Bileca town council has appealed a decision by a court to award Bosiljka Petkovic US$580,000 after the former communist authorities closed his bar in 1976 because patrons were singing Serb nationalist songs prohibited under the law. Petkovic lodged a complaint at the time but the case was only decided at the beginning of this year -- in his favor. The court's decision came into force this month.
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