■UNITED STATES
TV network founder charged
The founder of a US Muslim TV network has been arrested and charged with murdering his wife by beheading her, the network’s Web site and local media reported. Muzzammil Hassan, founder and chief executive officer of Buffalo, New York-based Bridges TV, was charged after reporting the death of his wife, Aasiya Hassan, 37, on Thursday night. After Hassan, 44, told police his wife was at the Bridges TV offices, they found her beheaded body there, the Buffalo News reported. Aasiya Hassan had recently filed for divorce and had an order of protection mandating that he leave their home as of Feb. 6. He is being held on second-degree murder charges. The couple had two children.
■UNITED STATES
Pet chimp shot dead
An 80kg domestic chimpanzee became enraged and attacked his owner’s friend, mauling her badly in the face and hands before he was shot dead by police, a Connecticut newspaper reported on Monday. Travis, a 15-year-old chimpanzee well known in Stamford, Connecticut, was slashed with a kitchen knife by his owner Sandra Herold trying to protect her friend, before he was killed. Two police officers responding to Herold’s emergency call were also injured when they tried to stop Travis from entering a police car, where another officer shot him in self defense, the Stamford Advocate said. The injured woman, whose identity was not disclosed, was recovering in hospital from serious injuries. What drove Travis to his aggressive outburst remained a mystery.
■MEXICO
Roaming buffalo penned
Mexico City residents are thankful to have a home where the buffalo no longer roam. Police say residents of a west-side neighborhood called to report buffaloes standing in the street, saying they didn’t know what to do. Two officers were dispatched to the scene Monday, and used a flashlight to herd the animals back to a pen from which they appeared to have escaped. A man showed up at the pen saying he was in charge of the buffaloes and thanked the policemen for returning them, but police say they will investigate whether the animals are being properly held there.
■MEXICO
Treasure-hunters rebuffed
The US treasure-hunting firm Odyssey has been denied a permit to search for a sunken 17th century Spanish galleon off the country’s eastern shores. Odyssey’s expedition “lacks investigative purposes and the support of archaeologists or of an academic institutions of renown prestige,” the National Institute of Anthropology and History said in a statement on Monday. Florida-based Odyssey was seeking to locate the remains of Nuestra Senora del Juncal, a Spanish galleon that sank in Campeche Sound in 1631.
■COLOMBIA
Eleven nabbed for sex
Police have arrested 11 Israelis for allegedly taking part in sex tourism in the Caribbean port city of Cartagena. The Israelis were arrested at a posh home in Cartagena allegedly while on hallucinogenic drugs and with prostitutes, including one minor, authorities said.
■UNITED STATES
Key crash parts located
Investigators have located the steering column, propeller blades; five of six deicing valves and other key components that might help reveal what the pilot did to try to save a plane that crashed into a home near Buffalo last Thursday, killing all 49 people on board and one person on the ground.
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