■ 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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
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