World Briefs

A group of around 90 former Royal Marines speed march through Trafalgar Square, in central London, as they take part in a half-marathon speed march to raise over £100,000 for the Royal Marines Association.

Three die in blast

Colombian officials say three adults have been killed and two children wounded in two related anti-personnel mine blasts in the country's north-west.

Two brothers, aged nine and 10, were wounded when they set off a mine in the town of Dabeiba, Wesly Uran. The boys' father, mother and uncle died in a second blast as they went to aid the youngsters.

Officials say the mines were on a forest path a three-hour walk from the town centre.

Holocaust official quits

A senior figure at an Austrian Holocaust research centre has quit in a dispute with the city's Jewish community, saying its goals 'can't be realised'.

The Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies began operations in January with the aim of giving scholars access to roughly 8,000 files of the late Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal and to parts of a vast archive belonging to the Jewish Community Vienna.

But reluctance by the Jewish community to provide full access to its trove of historic information had crippled the centre over the past 10 months, prompting last Friday's decision by the institute's business manager Ingo Zechner to leave.

Prison chief captured

Mexican police have caught a Tijuana prison director who spent a year on the run from charges of torturing 10 inmates.

The death of a 19-year-old prisoner sparked riots that left two dozen inmates dead at la Mesa State Penitentiary.

Marco Antonio Ibarra was arrested in the northern city of Culiacan. It's claimed he ordered guards to take 10 prisoners into a storage room and beat them. One of the prisoners, Israel Blanco, died.

Rise to challenge

A Seattle team has won $900,000 in a competition aimed at developing technology based on the science fiction concept of a space elevator - a theoretical way to reach orbit without using rockets.

The team earned the money by sending its laser-powered robot thousands of feet up a cable slung from a helicopter.

Laser Motive LLC was presented the money last Friday at Nasa's Dryden Flight Research Centre in the Mojave Desert after two other competitors in the three-day competition were unable to complete the climb of more than 900 metres.

Shot tourist dies

A Danish tourist died two days after being shot by robbers who tried to steal his camera while he visited a cemetery in Guatemala.

Paul Wolfgang Ritter, who had arrived on a Norwegian Cruise Liner, died in hospital in the port city of Santo Tomas de Castillo.

Officials say he and another tourist went on a tour to a nearby town last Wednesday and on the way back asked the driver to stop so they could take pictures. They were approached by two young men who tried to steal their cameras, and Ritter was shot in a scuffle. Two men have been arrested.

Killer landslide

Vietnamese officials say landslides have killed two people and left 11 others missing and feared dead, pushing the death toll from Tropical Storm Mirinae to 116.

The bodies of two victims were pulled from the rubble and rescuers are continuing to search for 11 others who went missing when their huts were buried by landslides in central Quang Nam province.

The death toll from Mirinae, which struck central Vietnam last Monday, is now at 116 and authorities estimate the damage of 4.9 trillion dong (£163 million).