Around the world
ARREST: British police have arrested a man suspected of attacking a preschool tea party with a machete. A witness said the attacker laughed as he slashed three toddlers and four adults. Horrett Campbell, 32, was arrested late Tuesday after police found him hiding in a closet in his 10-story apartment building. Police took him away under a blue blanket. The Wolverhampton man was suspected in Monday's attack outside St. Luke's Church of England school, police said. Four adults and three children, ages 3 and 4, suffered deep cuts and facial fractures in the attack.CHECHNYA: Russian planes bombed another Chechen village Wednesday, killing civilians, in a stepped-up offensive against rebels in southern parts of the separatist republic, a report said. The fighting has shattered the already shaky cease-fire signed while President Boris Yeltsin was seeking re-election with promises to bring peace to Chechnya. Russian aircraft and artillery pounded the village of Makhety, killing at least 20 civilians, the ITAR-Tass news agency said.
CRASH: A twin-engine charter plane crashed in the mountains of central Papua New Guinea, killing all 19 people aboard, including two infants. The Twin Otter propeller plane chartered by Milne Bay Air of Papua New Guinea was on its way to the southern highlands' provincial capital of Mendi on Tuesday when it hit an outcropping about 5 miles outside town.
Across the nation
TOURIST: The body of a German tourist was found lying in a street in Fort Myers, Fla., riddled with bullets, and the silver Mercedes he was driving was missing. Gerd-Ulrich Ladwig had been shot several times, the sheriff's office said. The shooting is the third tourist killing in Florida this year. The state's tourism industry has been trying for three years to recover from image problems that resulted from the murders of 10 foreign tourists, including several Germans, over a 13-month period.
VIPERS: Members of the Viper Militia should be kept behind bars because they might retaliate against infiltrators, a prosecutor argued. Defense attorneys denied any plot aimed at the government and said the group's explosives were only used in the desert. "There was no such plot. The only thing we've seen blown up on film was a hunk of dirt," defense attorney Deborah Williams said during the third day of a detention hearing in Phoenix for 12 members of the militia group. The hearing was expected to end Wednesday with arguments from remaining defense attorneys for the militia members, who were arrested July 1 and charged with conspiracy. Some face additional weapons charges.