World highlights

¤ Hurricane Wilma dumped heavy rain along Honduras' Caribbean coast yesterday and emergency crews prepared the evacuation of 10,000 people, including tourists on idyllic scuba diving islands. Wilma, expected to intensify into a major hurricane with winds of more than 177 kph, hovered off Honduras' Caribbean coast and the government declared a maximum alert as the storm menaced the beautiful Bay Islands.

¤ A 100-year-old timber dam strained by record rainfall threatened to break and flood the southern Massachusetts city of Taunton yesterday, forcing police to evacuate 2,000 people and close much of the city. Massachusetts emergency management officials said the Whittendon Pond Dam in Taunton, a city of 49,800 people about 53 kilometres south of Boston, could fail any time in the next 24 to 48 hours.

¤ An earthquake measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale shook Greece's Ionian Sea islands of Zakynthos and Cephalonia yesterday, causing minor damages but no injuries, state-run media said. The quake, whose epicentre was in the sea south of Zakynthos, struck at about 1630 GMT and was felt all the way to the southern Peloponnese peninsula, the state-run Athens News Agency reported. It said wall plaster fell off old houses on Zakynthos and windows shattered, while one home caught fire, caused by a broken lantern.

¤ A Singapore-bound Qantas plane with 389 passengers made an emergency landing in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata yesterday after pilots reported a smoke alarm, airport officials said. But there was no fire or smoke detected on the aircraft and all passengers and crew were safe.The Boeing 747 had taken off from London.

¤ Four British tourists and their Canadian pilot died when their light plane crashed in a remote area of western Tanzania, police said yesterday. The Cessna was completely destroyed in the crash on Sunday, regional police commissioner Boniface Mgongolwa said from the western Kigoma region.

¤ Italy's centre-left opposition walked out of a parliamentary hearing attended by Bank of Italy Governor Antonio Fazio yesterday, saying a recent banking scandal had weakened his credibility. Mr Fazio was addressing a hearing into the government's 2006 budget, making his first public appearance in Rome since critics turned on him during the summer months, accusing him of bias in his handling of a recent cross-border takeover banking bid.

¤ Norwegian coastguard vessels were shadowing a Russian trawler yesterday that made off with two Norwegian inspectors in Arctic waters in an incident that risked sparking a diplomatic row. Coastguards had arrested the Elektron on Saturday for breaking fishing rules in an area of the Barents Sea where Norway seeks to enforce strict fishing quotas. At first the Russian trawler allowed the two inspectors to board and followed the coastguards back to a Norwegian port. But it then switched course and headed for Russia, with the inspectors on board and the Norwegian coastguards in pursuit.