Australia
ADELAIDE — Australia may change laws "to protect people too stupid to protect themselves" after sightseers clambered on a floating dead whale and patted great white sharks eating the carcass, a senior official said Tuesday.
Azerbaijan
BAKU — Azerbaijan has protested to Iran that an Iranian gunship and a military aircraft threatened two oil exploration ships in what it claims to be the Azeri sector of the Caspian Sea.
Bulgaria
SOFIA — Bulgaria's parliament on Tuesday approved a new coalition government headed by Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg, formerly the country's King Simeon II.
Burundi
BUJUMBURA — Jittery residents of Burundi's capital said on Tuesday rifts among minority Tutsis over how to end civil war with majority Hutus meant more coup attempts were likely following a failed putsch on Monday.
Chile
SANTIAGO — A strong earthquake rocked northern Chile early Tuesday, killing one person and leaving three injured in remote Andean villages, authorities said.
China
BEIJING — A 19-year-old follower of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement set himself on fire on a city square in southern China and died the next day, state media reported.
BEIJING — Rescuers have found 46 bodies in a coal mine explosion in eastern China, and a rescue official said twice that number might be dead, the state Xinhua News Agency said Tuesday.
Haiti
PORT-AU-PRINCE — Police arrested a Haitian government surgeon on a charge of plotting to blow up the national health ministry building after allegedly finding grenade fragments at his home.
India
NEW DELHI — India's prime minister said Tuesday that efforts to cooperate with Pakistan will continue, but no agreement is possible without addressing the issue of cross-border terrorism.
GAUHATI — A train plowed into a patrol jeep carrying police at a railroad crossing in northeastern India, killing at least seven officers on Tuesday, police said.
Indonesia
JAKARTA — An Indonesian court sentenced a man to 15 years in jail for his role in a series of bomb attacks across the country on Christmas Eve last year, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Italy
CATANIA, Sicily — Ashes from a restive Mount Etna continued to rain down Tuesday on the city of Catania, but the airport was able to reopen after strong winds swept black volcanic ash and dust off the runway.
Macedonia
SKOPJE — Western diplomats struggled to save peace talks as ethnic Albanian rebels battled government forces in the worst fighting in months, reviving fears of full-scale civil war in this troubled Balkan nation.
Pakistan
ISLAMABAD — Rain disrupted relief and rescue operations on Tuesday in parts of northern devastated by record downpours that killed at least 170 people, officials said.
Russia
MOSCOW — The international moratorium on sturgeon fishing in the Caspian Sea may have come too late to save the black caviar-producing fish from extinction, the head of Russia's Caspian Fisheries Research Institute said Tuesday.
Sierra Leone
FREETOWN — Pro-government militiamen and rebels are committing atrocities against civilians in Sierra Leone despite progress toward ending a brutal 10-year civil war, a U.S.-based human rights group said on Tuesday.
South Africa
JOHANNESBURG — Former South African President Nelson Mandela has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, though the cancer should not pose a threat to his life, Mandela's foundation announced Tuesday.
JOHANNESBURG — An unlucky South African crook was arrested after he broke into a library where the local policeman was discussing crime statistics, a newspaper said on Tuesday.
South Korea
SEOUL — A bus carrying mostly sightseers hit a telephone pole and tumbled down a steep hill Tuesday, killing 18 people and injuring 25 others, police said.
Sweden
STOCKHOLM — A Swedish bullterrier swallowed 1,000 crowns ($94) but returned the money, almost unspoiled, to its mistress the natural way, the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter reported on Tuesday.