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COLOMBIA

3 Americans, Panamanian killed in plane crash

A small plane on a U.S. counter-drug mission crashed Saturday in a remote, jungle region of Colombia, killing three Americans and a Panamanian national guardsman and seriously injuring the other two Americans aboard.

The Havilland Dash 8 was flying over the western Caribbean when it lost radio contact with the U.S.-sponsored multinational task force in Key West, Fla., that runs drug interdiction in region, the U.S. military said. Such planes typically track speedboats that smuggle cocaine from Colombia into Central America and the Caribbean, but a U.S. Southern Command spokesman, Lt. Cmdr. Ron Flanders, said he did not have details on the mission. It was not clear if all the Americans were military contractors, although Southcom said the plane was contracted by the U.S. government.

The injured Americans were rescued by Colombian soldiers and taken to a hospital in Bogota, Southcom said. The names of the Americans were withheld pending notification of next-of-kin.

Both Southcom and a Colombian commander said there was no sign the plane was shot down. - AP
IRELAND

Voters: Keep the Senate

Voters rejected a government plan to abolish the much-criticized Senate, a surprise result Saturday that dealt a blow to Prime Minister Enda Kenny. He had campaigned for the proposed amendment, arguing the upper house of parliament was undemocratic, politically toothless, and expensive. - AP
IRAN

Call with Obama assessed

Iran's top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, hinted Saturday that he disapproved of the phone call between President Obama and President Hassan Rouhani during the Iranian's trip to New York last month, but he reiterated his support for Obama's policy of outreach to the West. - AP
IRAQ

Attacks kill dozens

A suicide bomber blew himself up among a crowd of Shiite pilgrims passing through a mainly Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad and another detonated his explosives inside a cafe north of the capital, the deadliest of several attacks across Iraq on Saturday that killed at least 66 people. - AP

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