A 45-year-old woman was killed and 10 bystanders were injured, three of them seriously, when a propeller plane crashed into a group of people at a snack stand during an air show in Kindel, near the eastern Germany city of Eisenach, on Saturday. The small airplane camve off the runway and rolled into a group of people during take-off.
Smuggling jobs advertised
Guatemala is investigating radio advertisements seeking elite ex-soldiers, who have been known to work for drug cartels, to smuggle goods into Mexico, officials said.
The ads were broadcast in the lawless northern jungle region of Peten, home to a tough military training centre for Kaibil soldiers, infamous during Guatemala's civil war as a brutal guerilla-fighting, special forces unit.
"We invite all citizens who have served in the military and graduated as Kaibils to work securing vehicles transporting merchandise to Mexico," the radio spot said, according to a local newspaper. The ad gave a telephone contact number.
Former Kaibil soldiers have been lured to work as assassins and run security for powerful drug lords by cash payments that can be as much as 10 times the average army salary, according to a Kaibil commander interviewed by Reuters.
Blackout hits power protest
A South African union was holding a public conference protesting against the country's power crisis when the lights went out. "It was symbolic," Solidarity union spokesman Jaco Kleynhans said.
The Solidarity trade union was hosting a briefing on its possible class action suit against troubled state utility Eskom over job cuts when it was reminded of South Africa's power woes. Delegates were left in the dark when Eskom implemented its daily blackouts that have caused traffic chaos and darkened homes.
South Africans are seething over a power crisis the government has warned could take years to resolve. Eskom produces about 95 per cent of South Africa's electricity and is spending billions of dollars to expand its generating capacity as it struggles to cope with rising demand from the country's growing economy.
Dozing minister to quit
Taiwan's Cabinet will soon lose one of its more colourful members who was notorious for sleeping in Parliament, shouting at legislators, picking his nose in public and shoving a journalist. Tu Cheng-sheng, Education Minister since 2004, will step down next month along with current President Chen Shui-bian.
"According to Eastern tradition and Taiwan culture, you could say that these actions were hard to accept," said Liu Chin-hsu, secretary-general of the National Teachers' Association.
The Cabinet of President-elect Ma Ying-jeou is shaping up as a group of technocrats rather than political firebrands.
Mr Tu, 63, a former National Palace Museum director, magazine editor and visiting Harvard University scholar, was filmed sleeping at an October 2007 Parliament meeting. He was also filmed deliberately picking his nose in public as a reaction to criticism for dozing off.
Calendar names restored
January is January again in the Central Asian state of Turkmenistan. President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, who swept to power in 2006 in his gas-rich Caspian nation, has reversed a decision made by his autocratic predecessor who renamed the first month of the year after himself in 2003.
Saparmurat Niyazov, who ruled Turkmenistan with an iron fist for 21 years until his death in 2006, dotted the desert nation with statues of himself and also renamed all other months and days of the week after his mother, national poets and symbols.
He declared himself Turkmenbashi, or Head of the Turkmen, and banned opera, ballet and circus during his long rule.
Mr Berdymukhamedov, seeking to soften Turkmenistan's image abroad and open up the long-isolated country, has been reserving some of Niyazov's most eccentric and unpopular policies. Under his latest reform, all months and days of the week will be given their original Turkic and Russian language names.