■ 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.
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