■ RUSSIA
Natural wonder destroyed
A severe landslide has nearly obliterated one of the country's most noted natural wonders, the Valley of Geysers, officials said on Monday. The valley in the Kronotsky national reserve on the Far Eastern Kamchatka Peninsula -- famed for its volcanoes -- contained about 90 geysers, as well as an array of thermal pools, and is the region's most popular tourist attraction. A snow-covered mound collapsed on Sunday and caused a massive landslide, about 1.5km long and 180m wide, that buried two thirds of the valley, a park ranger said. The landslide destroyed most of the valley's geysers and dozens of thermal springs stopping meters away from the valley's only hotel.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Anti-binging campaign
The government was expected to unveil a new alcohol strategy yesterday expected to focus on how to counter binge-drinking by changing young people's attitudes and behavior. At the heart of the approach, being unveiled by Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker, is expected to be the ambitious aim of changing the nation's drinking culture and views on drunkenness. It is also expected to announce plans to clamp down on those selling alcohol to underage children. The groups to be targeted are the under 18s, binge drinkers aged 18 to 24, and older drinkers unaware of the damage caused by their behavior.
■ ITALY
Vatican officials acquitted
A Rome appeals court acquitted a Vatican cardinal and another top churchman on Monday of environmental pollution involving a Vatican Radio transmission tower, a lawyer for the defendants said. In 2005, a lower court had convicted Cardinal Roberto Tucci, formerly head of Vatican Radio management committee, and the Reverend Pasquale Borgomeo, formerly the radio's director general, of polluting the environment because of electromagnetic wave emissions that had allegedly violated environmental limits. The appeals court ruled that Italy's penal code did not include electromagnetic waves under the charge -- dangerous "throwing of objects."
■ ALGERIA
New government appointed
President Abdelaziz Bouteflika named a new government on Monday after last month's parliamentary elections, retaining Prime Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem despite the record low voter turnout but naming a new foreign minister, Mourad Medelci, the former minister of finance. Mohamed Bedjaoui's ouster from the post of foreign minister was the only major change among key ministries. It was not immediately clear why he lost his job. The Cabinet had resigned on Friday in an expected move.
■ GERMANY
Ostrich sex claim case ends
Three teenagers were spared paying hefty damages after a court said an ostrich farmer had failed to prove his claim that the youths' noisy firecrackers made one of his birds impotent. The court in Bautzen on Monday ordered the three teens to pay only 140 euros (US$188) in vet costs for the ostrich, Gustav. Rico Gabel had claimed 5,000 euros in damages for the alleged antics on December 2005. He claimed that fireworks set off by the boys made the previously lustful Gustav apathetic and depressed, and thus unable to perform for half a year with his two partners.
■ MEXICO
Illegal immigrants die
Six Central Americans who were headed to the US illegally were crushed to death when dozens of other illegal immigrants and crates of bananas collapsed on them inside a truck in the south. A wooden platform holding up some 100 people squeezed into the top half of the truck gave way on Sunday and landed on those huddled underneath in the southern state of Oaxaca, media reported. Ten others were injured. "I just heard a crunch and the people at the top landed on top of us," Salvadoran survivor Nelson Garcia, 35, told the daily Reforma.
■ UNITED STATES
Killer driver detained
A man on a flight for Greece was detained in New York on Monday for the death of a woman who was dragged several kilometers under a minivan after trying to stop the driver from fleeing a collision in Florida. As the plane was pulling away from the gate at John F. Kennedy International Airport, Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Abdelaziz Hamze, 24, on Delta flight 132 bound for Athens, Broward County Sheriff's spokesman Elliot Cohen said. Hamze, a US citizen, will be charged with first-degree murder, Cohen said. He has been accused in the dragging death of 44-year-old Sandra Hall.
■ HAITI
State targets narco-airstrips
Authorities are trying to root out a network of secret airstrips used to smuggle in South American cocaine bound for the US, a top security official said on Monday. The effort came days after police and UN peacekeepers intercepted 420kg of cocaine in a coastal town in the country's biggest drug seizure in more than a decade. Much of the cocaine entering the country arrives by plane, usually small, single-engine aircraft that land on remote airstrips hidden throughout Haiti's poorly guarded countryside. "We want to identify these airstrips, find out who owns them and who they're associated with," the secretary of state for public safety said.
■ UNITED STATES
Crash driver smoked crack
A woman driver who plowed her car into an outdoor street festival in Washington, injuring at least 40 people, had taken crack cocaine, police said on Monday. "Yes, the person driving had been smoking crack all day," a police spokesman said. The 30-year-old driver, who has already served time for drug-related offenses, has been charged with assault with a weapon, her car being considered a weapon in this case. The accident occurred late on Saturday, when the woman, reportedly with a young child in the backseat of her vehicle, careened into the crowd at Washington's annual Unifest celebration.
■ UNITED STATES
Escaped kangaroo dies
A kangaroo that surprised residents as it bounded through rural central Indiana during the weekend died on Monday after authorities used a tranquilizer dart to capture it. Hancock County Animal Control officers helped capture the Australian marsupial, an escaped pet named Skippy, early on Monday not far from its home. The cause of Skippy's death was not known, said Kenny McConahay, an officer with the Greenfield/Hancock County Animal Control Department. It was not known what the kangaroo had done or eaten during its weekend of freedom, and the amount of tranquilizer used in the dart was only half of the recommended dose, McConahay said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not