■ Lesotho
603-carat diamond found
A 603-carat white diamond has been found in the tiny southern African kingdom, making it the biggest rock of the century and one of the world's largest, it was announced on Wednesday. "The diamond, named the Lesotho Promise, is the largest reported find this century and ranks as the 15th-largest diamond ever found," said the mine's joint owners, South Africa's Gem Diamond Mining and the Lesotho government. "The stone is an exceptional color, rated D, the top color for diamonds. The largest diamond previously found [in Lesotho] was the 601-carat Lesotho Brown recovered in 1967," the statement said.
■ United States
Rapist posing as officer
At least 10 girls and women have been raped on the Fort Apache Reservation in Whiteriver, Arizona, by a man who poses as a police officer, federal authorities said. Since March, nine girls and one young woman -- all Native American -- have been attacked on a trail between two housing projects between 10pm and 2am, said officials with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The attacks began in March, but the bureau became aware of them only in August. The agency formed a task force of agents to investigate. "Once they saw it was involving someone posing as law enforcement, the BIA made this a high priority," BIA agent Warren Youngman said.
■ Israel
Rogue skipper escapes jail
The commander of an Israeli commercial ship that rammed a Japanese fishing boat, killing seven people, was sentenced to a year of community service in a plea bargain, an Israeli TV station reported. The ship's second officer, Pilastro Zdravko, a citizen of Croatia, was in charge of the Zim Asia container ship when it crashed into the fishing boat on Sept. 28 last year, about 40km off the northern coast of Japan, killing seven of the eight men on the boat. The prosecution accepted the plea bargain because Japanese witnesses were either unable or unwilling to come to Israel to testify in a trial, Channel 2 TV reported. At the magistrate's court in the port city of Haifa on Wednesday, Zdravko was sentenced to six months in prison on a charge of causing death by negligence, but the prison term was converted to a year of public service at the port, the TV report said.
■ United States
Crash kills stunt pilot
A stunt pilot was killed when his single-engine plane crashed on Wednesday while performing a loop at an air show, police said. The crash happened in Tucumcari, 174km west of Amarillo, Texas. Guy "Doc" Baldwin, 60, lost control of the aircraft, Police Chief Larry Ham said. "We don't have any indications there was a mechanical failure," he said.
■ Russia
Suicide figures revealed
The country's suicide rate is the world's second highest, leaving only Lithuania ahead, the director of the Serbsky Center of Social and Legal Psychiatry said as quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency. "Every year 60,000 people take their lives in Russia, if one takes the annual average for the past 12 years," Tatyana Dmitriyeva told reporters on Wednesday. The most endangered group were adults aged 45-55 and adolescents, Dmitriyeva said, explaining that the leading reasons for suicide were biological predisposition, social upheavals, inflation, and stress linked to family conflicts, divorces and loneliness.
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