Rebel leader moved

St Denis The rebel leader of the Comoros island of Anjouan, who fled in a speedboat to the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte after being overthrown on Tuesday, is to be flown to the French island of Réunion, where he will face an investigation for weapons possession. French officials are removing Mohamed Bacar from Mayotte because of the large number of Anjouan people living there. (AFP)

40 die in bus crash

Kampala A bus overturned and caught fire in Kingo, 130 miles (200km) from Kampala, the Ugandan capital, killing 40 passengers, including four children. Many people were burnt to death. Only ten people escaped the vehicle, all of them sustaining severe injuries, and were rushed to Masaka hospital. The accident happened when the bus driver tried to overtake an articulated lorry. (AP)

No to Taleban talks

Karachi John Negroponte, the Deputy US Secretary of State who is visiting Pakistan, said of the new Government's hopes for peace talks with pro-Taleban forces that it was not possible to negotiate with “irreconcilable elements who want to destroy our way of life”. He added, however, that some hardliners could be persuaded to join the democratic process but denied having a hidden agenda. (AP)

Farc hostage treated

Bogotá Ingrid Betancourt, the French-Colombian hostage, is so ill that her captors, the Farc rebel group, took her to San José and El Retorno in southeastern Colombia for treatment, the national ombudsman said. The 46-year-old former presidential candidate, who was seized while campaigning in 2002, has hepatitis B and leishmaniasis, a disease caused by insect bites, Vólmar Pérez said. (AFP)

Parents let daughter die

CHICAGO The parents of a girl who died of a treatable form of diabetes are unrepentant in their belief that their prayers were of more use than a doctor, Wisconsin police said. Madeline Kara Neumann, 11, died on Easter Sunday after she slipped into a diabetic coma and stopped breathing, a post-mortem examination found. Police were on their way to her home in rural Wisconsin after receiving frantic calls from her aunt in California asking them to check on Neumann when a call came from the girl’s home saying that she had stopped breathing. (AFP)

Piercing alarm

LOS ANGELES A woman said that she was forced to remove a nipple ring with pliers in order to board a flight from Lubbock to Dallas, Texas. Mandi Hamlin, 37, demanded an investigation and an apology from federal security. She said that when her piercings set off an alarm she was told to remove them. One proved difficult to take out so she was forced to cut it off with pliers supplied by staff. (AP)

Russia moves to save sturgeon

MOSCOW Russia proposed yesterday that Caspian Sea states impose a five-year ban on fishing for sturgeon, prized for its caviar eggs, to save stocks from collapse, the fisheries agency said. It will formally propose the ban to Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Iran and Turkmenistan soon. Nearly all the world's sturgeon live in the Caspian Sea, and environmentalists say the fish is facing extinction. (AFP)

Paper planes in space

Tokyo Japan will launch a paper plane from the International Space Station to learn about spacecraft design, said the Origami Airplane Association. Two-inch prototypes made with chemically treated paper have been tested at Mach 7 speeds and 200C (400F) temperatures. But predicting where one will land is tricky. “We may write on it, ‘Please let us know when you find this',” an expert said. (AFP)

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