A roundup of today's other stories in brief.
Rottweilers maul woman to death
PARIS - Four rottweilers mauled a young woman to death at a house near Paris yesterday, savaging her face and arms.
Police had to shoot dead the dogs to get to the 23-year-old woman's body in a town near Beauvais, north of Paris. "She had very serious injuries on her face and upper limbs," police spokesman Michel Le Ray said.
The French government announced in June it would tighten laws on dangerous dogs after two small children were mauled to death in the space of three weeks. - (Reuters)
Istanbul protest at pope's visit
ISTANBUL - Dozens of young Turkish men, chanting "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest), occupied Istanbul's Aya Sofya museum yesterday in a protest ahead of Pope Benedict's visit to the former church next week.
One officer sprayed tear gas as police detained the men. Police arrested 39 demonstrators shouting anti-papal slogans. - (Reuters)
Israel to press on with Gaza action
JERUSALEM - Israel's security cabinet yesterday agreed to press on with military raids and "targeted killings" in the Gaza Strip but had not ordered a large-scale assault in response to a wave of Palestinian rocket attacks.
As Israeli forces killed four Gazans in fresh fighting, a cabinet statement said the military had been told to prepare and present a plan for a broader sweep. - (Reuters)
Wife kept man's body for 3 years
NEW YORK - A New York man hoping to reconcile with his parents made a grisly find in their Brooklyn apartment: his mother may have been living with his father's corpse for three years. Police said Paul Iversen went to his parents' Bay Ridge apartment yesterday to make amends after years of estrangement.
When he arrived, his mother, Joanne, told him his father, Frank, had died.
Then she showed her son the skeletal remains of an adult man, stored under bed covers in her bedroom. - (AP)
Woman (92) shot dead in drugs raid
ATLANTA - A police official yesterday said narcotics officers in the US were justified in returning fire on a 92-year-old woman they shot dead after she shot them as they tried to serve a warrant for a drugs search at her house.
Neighbours and relatives said it was a case of mistaken identity, but police in Atlanta, Georgia said the woman, identified as Kathryn Johnston, was the only resident in the house at the time and had lived there for about 17 years. - (AP)
Gas pipeline blast kills six
SURABAYA, Indonesia - An Indonesian gas pipeline exploded, killing at least six people and injuring nine others yesterday near Indonesia's second-largest city of Surabaya on Java island.
The burst in a part of the state-owned Pertamina East Java Gas Pipeline also caused "massive fires", according to reports. - (Reuters)