LIMA, Peru
A village in southern Peru has been struck by a mysterious illness after a meteorite crashed to the earth around midday Saturday, an official with the local health department said.
Villagers heard an explosion and saw a fireball that many thought was an airplane crashing near their remote village, located in the high Andes department of Puno in the Desaguadero region, near the border with Bolivia, according to a report from AFP.
Residents later complained of headaches and vomiting brought on by a "strange odor," according to health department official Jorge Lopez.
Police responding to the scene also became ill and had to be given oxygen before being hospitalized, Lopez said.
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LONDON -- Shares in one of Britain's largest lenders tumbled another 30 percent Monday as customers, driven by fears of insolvency, made run on the bank and withdrew billions.
Treasury Secretary Alistair Darling sought to assure depositors that their money was safe, even as former U.S. Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan warned of difficulties ahead in Britain's booming housing market.
Trading in the bank's shares was briefly suspended Monday morning, but not before they tumbled 140 pence to 298 pence ($2.81 to $5.98), on top of a 31 percent fall Friday. By late morning, shares hovered around 300 pence.
Northern Rock, Britain's fifth-largest mortgage lender, issued a profit warning Friday and Bank of England agreed to provide it with emergency funding.
The British Broadcasting Corp. reported Sunday that customers had withdrawn nearly 2 billion pounds ($4 billion) from Northern Rock accounts, though CEO Adam Applegarth refused to give a figure.
Speculation about a takeover ran rampant.
"The images of customers queuing up in the high street has done irreparable damage to the franchise," said Nic Clarke, an analyst for Charles Stanley & Co. in London.
"There is value in Northern Rock for a predator with a strong balance sheet ...   more »

By News agencies   
Saudi Arabia said on Monday it had signed an agreement with the British government to buy 72 Eurofighter Typhoon jets for nearly $9 billion.
"A contract was signed between the two governments to buy the plane on Tuesday, Shaaban 29 (September 11) at a cost of 4,430 million pounds sterling," a statement on official news agency SPA said, attributed to a Defense Ministry official.
It said the cost per jet was the same as its sale price to British air forces.
Last year it was reported that Saudi Arabia might cancel the deal because of a U.K. fraud investigation into suspicions of graft in defense deals dating to the 1980s. But the deal went ahead after the investigations were closed.
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MOSCOW (AFP) — Any US military intervention in Iran would be a "political error" that would have "catastrophic" consequences, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov said in an interview published Tuesday.
"Generally speaking, bombings of Iran would be a bad move that would end with catastrophic consequences," he told the daily Vremya Novosti.
Losyukov expressed the hope that there would not be an escalation of tension in the region, at least before the end of a summit of Caspian Sea countries due to be held in Tehran on October 16.
"I don't know if the Americans will bomb during the Caspian summit. I think they will refrain, otherwise they would have serious problems," he said in reply to a question.
"We are convinced that there is no military solution to the Iranian problem. It's impossible. Besides, it is quite clear that there is no military solution to the Iraq problem either. But in the case of Iran everything could be even more complicated," he said.
At the same time, Losyukov did not rule out an eventual evacuation of the Russian experts working on construction of a nuclear plant at Bushehr.
"As the situation in Iran is difficult, we have plans ...   more »

Fox News reports US officials seriously contemplating attack on Iran's nuclear program after Germany withdraws support for more sanctions
Yitzhak Benhorin
US officials are mulling a military assault on Iran's Islamic regime after a recent decision by Germany to withhold support for new sanctions against Tehran over its refusal to heed international calls to halt nuclear work, Fox News reported Tuesday.
Germany is one of three EU nations, along with Britain and France, that are leading efforts to halt Iran's nuclear program through diplomacy and sanctions.
Fox News reported on its Web site that German officials said during a meeting with Iranian delegates in Berlin that Chancellor Angela Merkel will no longer support further sanctions against Iran by the United Nations Security Council, leading Bush administration officials to believe that sanctions are dead.
Germany would however would "privately welcome, while publicly protesting," a US bombing campaign against Iran's nuclear facilities.
The news channel also said that there was broad consensus across the relevant US agencies that Germany would withdraw from the diplomatic efforts led by the United States.It was also reported that US officials believe that Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns has failed in finding a ...   more »

WASHINGTON - China and Russia are spying on the U.S. nearly as much as they did during the Cold War.
That's the word from national intelligence director, Mike McConnell, in testimony prepared for a House Judiciary Committee hearing today.
He is promoting a law passed last month expanding the U.S. government's eavesdropping power. He says it's needed to protect against not only terrorists but more traditional potential
adversaries as well.
The new Protect America Act allows the government to listen in, without a court order, on all communications conducted by a person reasonably believed to be outside the U.S., even if an American is on one end of the conversation.
Some lawmakers are having second thoughts after hastily passing the law before the August recess. Civil liberty groups and privacy advocates are staunchly against it.
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