A small propeller airplane crashed into a group of people at an air show in the eastern German town of Eisenach yesterday, killing a 45-year-old woman and injuring 10 others, police said.
"A small airplane taking off came off the runway and rolled into a group of people," a police spokeswoman said.
She said that three people were seriously injured and seven others, including two children aged nine and 14, suffered less serious injuries.
Mattress factory fire kills 55
Fire broke out at a mattress factory in the Moroccan coastal city of Casablanca yesterday morning killing 25 people, state news agency MAP reported.
Eight others including a police officer were seriously injured in the fire which broke out at 10 a.m. on the ground floor of the factory, which employs around 150 people.
Over 100 fire-fighters were needed to bring the blaze under control. An inquiry has been launched to determine the cause of the fire.
Communist rebels kill four in Philippines
Communist rebels killed four soldiers in a clash in the southern Philippines yesterday, a day after they abducted two troops in the same area, police said.
"Two soldiers and two militiamen (part-time soldiers) were killed in the 30-minute gun battle," Superintendent Ronald Dela Rosa, the police chief of Compostela Valley, 965 km south of Manila, said.
The 5,000 member New People's Army (NPA), waging a near 40 year insurgency, has stepped up attacks in the southern Philippines in recent months targeting mines and foreign-owned businesses.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has vowed to defeat the NPA by the time her final term ends in June 2010, but the rebels continue to engage in tit-for-tat attacks on the military and police.
In yesterday's clash, the NPA rebels, estimated at around 30, seized the soldiers' rifles before fleeing into nearby forests, Dela Rosa said. There was no report of casualties on their side.
14 killed in Mexico drug battle
Fourteen Mexican drug gang members were killed and eight others were injured in a gun battle near the US border yesterday, one of the bloodiest shootouts in Mexico's three-year-long narco-war.
Rival factions of the local Arellano Felix drug cartel in Tijuana on the Mexico-California border fought each other with rifles and machine guns in the early hours of the morning, police said.
The bodies lay in pools of blood, strewn along a road on the city's eastern limits, surrounded by hundreds of bullet casings. Many of the victims' faces were destroyed.
Two men were arrested but the remaining survivors escaped.
The Arellano Felix gang was long the dominant drug-trafficking organisation in Tijuana, smuggling drugs into California. Recently the group has been under attack from a rival gang from the Pacific state of Sinaloa, led by Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin 'Shorty' Guzman.
Dutch government to ban magic mushrooms
The Dutch cabinet has proposed a ban on the sale of all hallucinogenic 'magic' mushrooms because they could induce life-threatening behaviour.
A bill will now pass to the Dutch parliament, where a majority of lawmakers are expected to back a ban after a teenage French girl who had eaten mushrooms died jumping from a bridge in 2007.
While dried magic mushrooms are illegal in the Netherlands, fresh mushrooms can still be bought openly in so-called 'Smart Shops'.
Posters in Smart Shops outline the effects the mushrooms have and whether users are more likely to feel chatty or exhilarated, for example.
"The use of mushrooms can produce hallucinogenic effects which can lead to extreme or life-threatening behaviour," the health ministry said in a statement late on Friday after the cabinet decision.
In February the Dutch association of Smart Shops (VLOS) promised tighter self-regulation and noted the majority of mushroom-related incidents involved young tourists to Amsterdam mixing mushrooms with alcohol and cannabis.
Figures from the Amsterdam emergency services show there were 55 call-outs for mushroom-related incidents in 2004, a figure which had more than doubled by 2006 to 128, with the majority of youngsters involved coming from Britain.
Taliban ease mobile phone threat
As the days lengthen towards summer in Afghanistan, so will the time locals can use their mobile phones without fear of Taliban retribution.
The Taliban told Afghan mobile phone operators in February to shut down networks from 5 p.m. until 7 a.m. or face attack.
Foreign troops in Afghanistan use mobile phones to track insurgent fighters, they said, and to drive home the threat the Taliban have destroyed several phone towers in the south. The Taliban largely rely on mobile and satellite phones for communication in their campaign to oust the pro-Western Afghan government and drive out foreign troops.
They accuse international and Afghan forces of using the networks to track their fighters. Western and Afghan government officials say the Taliban move at night and want to stop villagers informing security forces of their whereabouts.