The kidnapping of seven Estonians brought back fears about the resumption of abductions that were common during the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war amid reports that the men could have been snatched to be used as a bargaining chip for a Palestinian recently arrested in Ukraine.

The Estonian tourists cycling in the eastern Bekaa Valley were kidnapped on Wednesday by armed men.

Screen legend Elizabeth Taylor, the violet-eyed film goddess whose sultry screen life was often upstaged by her stormy personal life, died Wednesday at age 79.

She died of congestive heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she had been hospitalized for about six weeks, publicist Sally Morrison said.

Newly rich South Africans are increasingly accused of witchcraft and attacked by their neighbors, police in the northern province of Limpopo said Wednesday.

"Now you are a witch because you are driving a four-by-four. This is the mentality that people have," police spokesman Hangwani Mulaudzi, told the Sapa news agency.

The Albanian authorities have seized 200 kilos of Colombian cocaine with an estimated value of over 15 million euros ($21 million) hidden in vats of palm oil, they said Wednesday in a statement.

At least five people, including two Macedonian nationals, were arrested in connection with the find, the police said.

A policeman in India was recovering in hospital on Wednesday after he shot himself in a misguided attempt to win a bravery award, media reports said.

Mahesh Rajguru claimed that six unidentified men opened fire when he was on personal protection duty at a house of a former politician in Jaipur, the capital of the eastern state of Rajasthan.

A 63-year-old Dutch woman gave birth to a daughter on Monday, becoming the oldest-ever new mother in the Netherlands, the hospital and news reports said.

"Baby Meagan was born at the Medical Centre Leeuwarden at 9:48 am (0848 GMT) on March 21," said a statement on the website of the hospital in the northern Dutch province of Friesland.

A helicopter used by German Chancellor Angela Merkel came close to crashing last week when both engines failed just after she had disembarked, a government spokesman said Sunday.

The Super Puma 332, which reportedly only entered service in December, suffered double engine failure at an altitude of 1,600 meters (5,250 feet) on Wednesday in southern Germany, the spokesman said.

Italy Sunday snatched from Romania the record for the production of the world's longest sausage when a team of pork butchers crafted a delicacy more than half a kilometer long, the ANSA news agency reported.

Alberto Della Pelle from Penne, a small town in central Italy, helped by nine colleagues, created a sausage 597.8 meters (1,961 feet) long in the main street.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin stood meters away from a snow leopard in his latest stunt involving a threatened animal but insisted Monday he was just an "ordinary guy" in touch with Russia's problems.

Putin knelt meters away from the snow leopard, kept in a wire-mesh enclosure, as the mythical animal warily eyed the man who has dominated Russia for the last decade in Siberia, state television pictures showed.

‘Lebanon Animals’ association rescued a hyena put in a small cage at a pet shop in the southern port city of Sidon, the National News Agency reported Sunday.

It said the association seized the animal after getting the consent of the environment and interior ministries.