COLOMBIAN authorities said they were due to hand over a pregnant 15-year-old Texas girl to US officials last night to be reunited with her family, nine months after she was deported to South America in a bizarre mix-up.

THOUSANDS of people fled their homes along the California coast yesterday as a tsunami triggered by the massive earthquake in Japan began hitting the US West Coast after rolling through Hawaii.

IRELAND has the fifth-highest number of cocaine-related drug deaths out of 22 European countries, according to a UN report.

CHILE’S president sent the army to help police attack looters yesterday and appealed for international help in the wake of an earthquake that shattered cities and killed at least 708 people.

Riot police fired tear gas to keep protesters away from Peru’s Congress as thousands marched to back Amazon Indians who want logging laws that they say threaten their lands overturned.

Ecuador’s Constitutional Assembly says it is granting former President Gustavo Noboa amnesty from legal charges that he allegedly mishandled the country’s foreign debt negotiations.

A VENEZUELAN passenger plane slammed into a steep mountainside in the Andes, killing all 46 people on board, officials said yesterday.

The wreckage of plane carrying 46 people was found today scattered across mountains in western Venezuela. There were feared to be no survivors.

Ecuador will open bidding for a major oil project in a jungle nature reserve next June if the poor Andean country does not raise international funding to abandon the proposal, the oil minister says.

An explosion tore through a coal mine in remote north-east Colombia today, burying at least 31 miners in tunnels filled with toxic gases, a rescue official said.

Left-wing leaders including Bolivian president Evo Morales and Nicaraguan president-elect Daniel Ortega rejoiced in the rise of their progressive movement in Latin America as they marked Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s 80th birthday.

Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela were heading today to a European summit amid criticism of recent moves making it tougher for foreign energy firms to do business in their countries.

Latin American leaders head for a meeting with the European Union this week amid disputes that threaten some of the Western Hemisphere’s political and trade alliances.

SABMiller unveiled a takeover deal worth $7.8bn (£4.48bn/€6.5bn) today to cement its position as the world’s second-largest brewer.

THE next time you are with a friend, in the pub, the park, the playground or the pew, ask yourself how much you trust them.

NEARLY 70,000 people were slain in Peru’s 20-year war against Shining Path guerrillas, according to a truth commission report the government hopes will help the nation in coming to terms with its past.

Suspected right-wing paramilitary fighters kidnapped as many as 207 workers off palm oil plantations in Colombia in what the army described as the country’s biggest mass kidnapping.