World briefs 8/13/03

Two Americans dead after crash in S. Korea

SEOUL, South Korea -- A U.S. military transport plane on a maintenance test flight crashed Tuesday south of Seoul, killing the two Americans on board, the U.S. military said.

The C-12 Huron, a 10-seat turboprop plane, went down at 2:43 p.m. seven miles southwest of Camp Humphreys, a U.S. base, the military said.

The pilot and the co-pilot died, the U.S. Eighth Army said in a news release. Their names were withheld pending notification of their families.

South Korean police Lt. Sung Yol-gap said there were no casualties on the ground.

The U.S. military news release quoted a local resident as saying that he saw the plane "on fire, maneuvering away from the populated area of the town" before the crash.

Divers find downed Indian helicopter

BOMBAY, India -- Divers found a helicopter lying upside down in the Arabian Sea on Tuesday, a day after it crashed while carrying 29 people from an offshore oil rig to the Bombay coast.

Two people were rescued after the crash, and crews recovered three bodies; the others are feared trapped inside the wreck of the helicopter, coast guard Commandant V. Andarasan said.

"It is pitch dark out there. The waters are muddy; the visibility is very poor," he said.

There were 25 passengers and four crew members aboard the Russian-made MI-172 helicopter chartered by the state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp. when it plunged into Bombay High, an oil field off India's western coast.

Mexico captures 12 connected to smuggling

MEXICO CITY -- Special agents captured a dozen people accused of organizing a smuggling operation in which 19 illegal immigrants died after being locked in a tractor-trailer, the government announced Tuesday.

Interior Secretary Santiago Creel and Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha said officials have issued arrest warrants for 25 other suspects.

"We don't have to tell you the magnitude of the tragedy here," Creel said. "But in less than three months we have struck a positive blow against one of the most important smuggling gangs in the country."

Seventeen people were found dead May 14 in and around a Houston-bound tractor-trailer left near a truck stop in Victoria, Texas. Two more died later and dozens of survivors fled into nearby fields.

Cockroaches hamper attempt at domino topple

SINGAPORE -- Cockroaches are just a creepy, crawling nuisance to many -- but for Ma Lihua, who has been painstakingly setting up dominoes for the past six weeks in preparation for the world's longest solo topple, they are the enemy.

One bug alone knocked down 8,000 tiles -- a day's work for Ma, an event organizer said Tuesday.

Ma, a 24-year-old domino-laying expert from Beijing has been putting in 13-hour-days to meet her deadline and only takes short breaks for meals and the occasional badminton game to help relieve stress, said Brian Kim, Singapore manager of LG Electronics, the Korean company sponsoring the event next week.

She hopes to topple 350,000 tiles on Monday, he said.

-- From wire reports