BP says oil well is now secured after 11 dead and 4m barrels of oil spilled
BP's ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well is secure, with no threat of spewing crude again, US officials said yesterday.
The Macondo BOP (designed to shut off all flow and contain pressure if oil or gas gush uncontrollably from a seabed well) failed on April 20, leading to an explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drill rig that killed 11 men.
The well spewed more than 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf over nearly three months.
Militants fire rocket into Israel
Militants in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip yesterday fired a rocket into south Israel, two days after the start of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, causing no injuries or damage, the Israeli military said.
The cross-border rocket was the first since Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Washington last week to relaunch peace negotiations.
Taliban attack death toll rises to 65
The death toll from a Pakistani Taliban suicide attack on a Shiite Muslim procession rose from 43 to 65 as critically wounded people died in hospitals.
About 150 people were wounded and some remained in critical condition after the bombing on Friday in the south-western city of Quetta.
'Bike bomber' kills seven Afghans
A suicide bomber on the back of a motorbike killed seven people, including four Afghan policemen, in an attack yesterday in the increasingly violent northern province of Kunduz in Afghanistan.
Nine die as bus engulfed by landslide
A landslide on one of Guatemala's major highways buried a bus on Saturday, killing at least nine people and injuring around 25 more, emergency workers said.
The bus, on the Inter-American highway 80km outside of the capital, was suddenly engulfed by mud around 8am.
Two planes collide during air race
Two men died last night when their aircraft collided mid-air with another light plane during an air race, organisers said. A four-seater touring aircraft is believed to have broken up and plummeted into remote woodland after crashing with a sports aircraft over the Isle of Wight.
Slum criminals hijack Rio ambulance
criminals in Rio de Janeiro hijacked an ambulance and forced the driver to give them a lift before taking their patient to hospital.
Armed men stopped the ambulance shortly after it picked up a patient in a shantytown in the north of the city. The gang made the driver bring them to another slum before allowing him to continue. Two paramedics were also on board. No one was injured.
The ambulance service insisted that paramedics would continue to take calls from the slums despite the incident.
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