In brief: N. Korea fires shells into sea

SEOUL, South Korea – South Korea denounced a barrage of artillery fired by North Korea into the sea as a grave provocation today and warned that it would deal sternly with any further such acts.

North Korea fired about 110 rounds Monday near its disputed western sea border with South Korea shortly after Seoul ended five-day naval drills staged in response to the March sinking of its Cheonan warship. North Korea has been blamed for the vessel’s destruction, which killed 46 sailors.

Most of the shells in Monday’s barrage landed in the North’s waters, but about 10 struck near a South Korean island causing no damage, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

Ad depicts 9/11, proposed mosque

NEW YORK – New York City’s transit agency has approved a bus advertisement that depicts a plane flying toward the World Trade Center’s towers as they burn along with a rendering of a proposed mosque near ground zero.

The ad was paid for by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, an organization that opposes radical Islamic influence in the United States. The group’s executive director said she doesn’t find the ad offensive.

The group sued the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to demand it accept the ad, which was approved Monday.

LEIDSCHENDAM, Netherlands – Naomi Campbell flirted with Liberia’s former president across the dinner table at Nelson Mandela’s presidential mansion in 1997 and boasted the following morning that Charles Taylor had given her a huge diamond during the night, Mia Farrow and another witness testified at Taylor’s war crimes trial Monday.

Prosecutors hope testimony from the actress-turned-human rights activist and from Campbell’s estranged former modeling agent will help tie Taylor to the illicit “blood diamond” trade that fueled Sierra Leone’s civil war. Both contradicted Campbell’s account from the witness stand last week that she did not know the nature or value of what she had received.

Taylor says he is innocent of 11 war-crimes charges linked to allegations he supported rebels during Sierra Leone’s vicious 11-year civil war, which ended in 2002 with an estimated 100,000 dead.

Flight attendant goes off, arrested

NEW YORK – A JetBlue flight attendant at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Monday afternoon activated an emergency slide after a confrontation with a passenger on a plane, grabbed cans of beer from the aircraft’s galley and slid down the chute before taking off in his car, officials said.

Steven Slater, 39, ran into the terminal and then drove to his home in Belle Harbor, Queens, officials said, where Port Authority police later arrested him.

According to a law enforcement official, Slater became upset after a passenger accessed the overhead bins while the plane was taxiing to the gate, after being given repeated orders to sit down. The passenger hit Slater in the head with his luggage, and when the passenger refused to apologize, Slater used the plane’s public address system to curse at everyone on the plane, the official said.