Police arrested 17 people and had to close six London Underground stations after a party involving thousands of revellers to mark the last day of drinking alcohol on the tube turned ugly.

Six assaults were reported on underground rail staff and police. Several damaged trains had to be withdrawn from service on a night of mayhem that had been dubbed "Last Round on the Underground" by revellers.

The festivities were at first good-natured with partygoers wearing fancy dress as they swigged beer and wine, dancing and singing in the railway carriages. But police moved in when the mood turned sour and fighting erupted, spoiling what officers had called "a fun event".

The London transport ban on alcohol is designed to make buses, tubes and trains safer for the public but unions fear staff could be put in greater danger when they have to confront those breaking the ban.

Rare rhino under threat

Poaching in the Himalayas is taking a heavy toll on the population of the endangered one-horned rhinoceros in Nepal.

There were 31 rhinoceros in Bardiya National Park, in Nepal's southwestern plains last year of which nine have gone missing, park official Phanindra Kharel said. "This shows that the rhinoceros are under threat from poachers," he said. "This is very serious and if this continues we may not have any rhinoceros left soon."

Global conservation group WWF estimates there are less than 3,000 rhinoceros left in the world. They are found mostly in northeastern India and about 425 in neighbouring Nepal. The other area where the one-horned rhinoceros is found is the northeastern Indian state of Assam which has 1,855 beasts.

Rhino horns are considered to have aphrodisiac qualities and fetch a high price in China and Southeast Asian countries.

Obama jokes about having big ears

Even in the middle of a fierce presidential campaign, Barack Obama couldn't resist the opportunity to go on a field trip. When the Democratic White House hopeful heard the press corps and some staff members were planning a late-night trip to see Mount Rushmore National Monument, he decided he didn't want to be left out.

So, shortly after arriving in South Dakota after an evening campaign rally in Montana, Mr Obama made the 30-minute car trip to see the monument, of four presidents chiselled into the side of a massive granite outcropping.

He laughed when asked if he could imagine his face chiselled into the granite some day. "I don't think my ears would fit," he said. "There's only so much rock up there."

Ousted king house hunting

Nepal's ousted King Gyanendra is looking for a house and consulting astrologers to find out when to quit the palace after a special assembly abolished the monarchy.

A historic assembly vote last Wednesday turned Nepal into a republic and gave deposed King Gyanendra two weeks to leave the sprawling Narayanhity palace in the heart of the capital.

King Gyanendra has not commented so far about the end of the 239-year-old monarchy, but state-run daily Gorkhapatra quoted a senior palace official as telling a government minister that the deposed monarch would "honour" the assembly vote.

It said the King Gyanendra was looking for a house as his son Paras and his family were living in the private home in an upmarket area in Kathmandu where the dethroned king lived before ascending the throne in 2001.

The independent daily Naya Patrika said the 60-year-old Gyanendra did not want to leave the palace until early July when an astrological "dark" phase is due to end.

Australian nun's sainthood bid

The Vatican is investigating whether a woman who had inoperable lung cancer was cured by a miracle that would qualify Australian nun Mary MacKillop for sainthood, Australian media reported over the weekend.

Two doctors are looking into the case of a woman who was told in 1993 she had weeks to live. She pinned a small picture of Sister MacKillop and a piece of the nun's habit to her clothes and, 10 months after being diagnosed, had no sign of cancer, said Maria Casey, the lead nun lobbying the Vatican to canonise Sr MacKillop.

If verified, this would be the second miracle needed for Sister McKillop to become a saint in the eyes of the Catholic Church.

Man jailed for faking death

A Singapore man was jailed for three years after he faked his own death in a civil war shoot-out in Sri Lanka in 1987 to escape his creditors and claim S$331,341 (€156,562) in insurance money.

The Straits Times said that Gandaruban Subramaniam fled Singapore more than 20 years ago - harassed by creditors and illegal money lenders since the failure of his car rental business - and moved to London to work as a street sweeper.

The 60-year-old eventually settled in Sri Lanka where he managed to obtain a death certificate stating he had been killed in a shootout between government troops and Tamil Tiger rebels, allowing his family to claim on his insurance policies.

But he returned to Singapore a number of times using a fake Sri Lankan passport and also remarried his wife in Sri Lanka in 1994 and fathered a son, their fourth child, two years later.

Jesus statue made of cocaine

US customs officials have seized a statue of Jesus Christ made from plaster mixed with cocaine - the latest sophisticated attempt to smuggle drugs from Mexico.

Sniffer dogs at the border crossing in Laredo, Texas, alerted officials to the smell of narcotics in the three-kilo statue, which was in the trunk of a car being driven by a Mexican woman into the United States last week. "The statue tested positive for cocaine," Nancy Herrera, an official at the US Attorney's Office Southern District of Texas said.

US border police arrested a 61-year-old Mexican man accused of offering the woman $80 to carry the statue to the bus station in downtown Laredo.

The woman escaped back to Mexico, Herrera said.