■ LEBANON
French plane searched
Airport and security officials say a French jetliner was searched at Beirut airport shortly before takeoff after a passenger said her baggage might contain a bomb. The officials say the passengers on Tuesday's flight were told to disembark and the plane was searched by dogs. They say nothing was found in the woman's baggage. The officials say she was being questioned by authorities.
■ GREECE
Fire under control
A wildfire that prompted authorities to declare a state of emergency on Skopelos was brought under control late on Tuesday, officials said. The fire service said two firefighters suffered light burns in the blaze, which ravaged more than 300 hectares of forest land but did not threaten inhabited areas. Gale-force winds blowing in the area hampered efforts to extinguish the fire, which broke out on Monday and quickly spread despite overnight rainfall. The causes of the blaze were unclear. The fire service said a total of 53 wildfires broke out on Monday and early on Tuesday throughout the country.
■ FRANCE
First lady nudie on sale
A nude photo of first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is to be auctioned at a sale next month in New York City, an auction house said. The image was taken by photographer Michel Comte in 1993, when Bruni-Sarkozy was one of the world's most coveted models. In the black-and-white photo, she strikes a pigeon-toed pose, her hands covering her crotch. The photo is expected to fetch US$3,000 to US$4,000 at the auction, to be held at New York's Rockefeller Plaza, the Web site for Christie's auction house said. Sarkozy divorced his second wife in October and married the Italian-born former model last month after a quick courtship.
■ NORWAY
Building collapses
A six-story apartment building collapsed early yesterday in the west coast city of Aalesund, injuring 15 people and leaving six others missing, police said. Aalesund Police Operations leader Magne Tjoennnoe said about 20 people were believed to have been inside the building, based on its normal occupancy. He said the cause of the collapse of the relatively new building had not been determined. "Fifteen people have been brought to the hospital, some with moderate injuries, some with minor ones. We are trying to account for six other people," he said by telephone. "We don't know where they are or whether they were in the building or elsewhere."
■ RUSSIA
Undertaker arrested
Police have arrested a leading Moscow undertaker for taking a US$25,000 bribe in the illegal sale of a graveyard plot, the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda reported on Tuesday. Alexander Imedadze, deputy head of the capital's main funeral services company Ritual, was arrested in a police sting operation that was filmed and posted on the newspaper's Web site. There is a serious shortage of graves in Moscow and a growing secondhand market for people selling family plots. Imedadze is accused of asking for US$25,000 for illegally reregistering a grave. At just under 3.6m3, the plot's price would have worked out as even more expensive than accommodation for the living in Moscow.
■ UNITED STATES
DNA puzzle in Ramones case
The lawyer for a woman accused of beating real estate agent and former Ramones band manager Linda Stein to death said on Tuesday the city's medical examiner found male DNA in a bathroom sink mingled with the slain woman's blood. Attorney Ronald Kuby, whose client is murder suspect Natavia Lowery, said this information was in a Jan. 11 medical examiner's report that prosecutors sent to him. He said it stated there was a "mixture of DNA from the victim and a male." Kuby suggested in a March 25 letter to Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Micki Scherer, the judge hearing Lowery's case, that the male DNA came from Stein's killer. He said the man likely left the DNA while cleaning up after killing Stein. The lawyer also said that while Stein's blood was spattered around her US$3 million Fifth Avenue apartment, not a drop of her blood was found on Lowery's clothing.
■ UNITED STATES
Search for sailor abandoned
The US Coast Guard said on Tuesday that it suspended the search for a Japanese crew member still missing after a fishing vessel sank in frigid waters off Alaska's Aleutian Islands. The crew member, Satashi Konno, was wearing a survival suit when the ship went down on Sunday, but officials said it would have been difficult for him to survive the dangerous 2.2oC temperatures in the Bering Sea. The search ended late on Monday. "We searched long and hard for Mr Konno and unfortunately have been unable to locate any sign of the Fishing Master from the Alaska Ranger," Coast Guard Rear Admiral Gene Brooks said in a statement. The last group of the ship's 42 survivors arrived in Dutch Harbor overnight on a Coast Guard cutter. Four people whose bodies were recovered earlier died of hypothermia, including captain Eric Peter Jacobsen. They spent up to six hours in the frigid water after the vessel began to sink, apparently unable to make it to life rafts.
■ UNITED STATES
NY governor admits drug use
New York's new governor, who disclosed last week that he and his wife both committed adultery several years ago, said that he used cocaine in his 20s and smoked marijuana when he was younger. In reference to cocaine, Governor David Paterson, 53, said on Monday in a television interview that he "tried it a couple of times" when he was 22 or 23. "And marijuana probably when I was about 20," he said on the NY1 cable news station. "I don't think I touched marijuana since the '70s." Paterson was lieutenant governor under governor Eliot Spitzer, who resigned last week amid a prostitution scandal.
■ UNITED STATES
Man charged after toilet rage
A New Yorker who was dragged from the rest room of a city nightclub by two men who accused him of taking too long on the toilet has been charged with a botched revenge killing, police said on Tuesday. Luis Paulino, 47, was using the bathroom at a Bronx night spot when two men started banging on the door, and then, after they grew increasingly impatient, kicked it down and pulled him out so they could use it. The New York Post reported Paulino told police he then went home and fetched his gun and returned to the club to get his revenge. Paulino is accused of shooting two men, one of them fatally, but investigators believe Paulino may have shot the wrong men.
‘SHORTSIGHTED’: Using aid as leverage is punitive, would not be regarded well among Pacific Island nations and would further open the door for China, an academic said New Zealand has suspended millions of dollars in budget funding to the Cook Islands, it said yesterday, as the relationship between the two constitutionally linked countries continues to deteriorate amid the island group’s deepening ties with China. A spokesperson for New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said in a statement that New Zealand early this month decided to suspend payment of NZ$18.2 million (US$11 million) in core sector support funding for this year and next year as it “relies on a high trust bilateral relationship.” New Zealand and Australia have become increasingly cautious about China’s growing presence in the Pacific
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
ESPIONAGE: The British government’s decision on the proposed embassy hinges on the security of underground data cables, a former diplomat has said A US intervention over China’s proposed new embassy in London has thrown a potential resolution “up in the air,” campaigners have said, amid concerns over the site’s proximity to a sensitive hub of critical communication cables. The furor over a new “super-embassy” on the edge of London’s financial district was reignited last week when the White House said it was “deeply concerned” over potential Chinese access to “the sensitive communications of one of our closest allies.” The Dutch parliament has also raised concerns about Beijing’s ideal location of Royal Mint Court, on the edge of the City of London, which has so
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