Three Americans on missing plane

Authorities were searching Monday for a small twin-engine aircraft carrying three Americans and a Panamanian pilot after the plane lost contact with controllers.

Air and ground searches were being carried out in heavily forested areas of the western province of Chiriqui, where the plane was last reported on Sunday, said Armando Palacios, regional chief of Panama’s civil defense agency.

“We haven’t found the plane yet. We have an idea of where it could be, but the weather isn’t helping,” said agency director Roberto Velasquez. It was raining heavily in the area.

Palacios said the aircraft – which was carrying a U.S. investor, his daughter and a friend – set out from Islas Secas off Panama’s Pacific coast and was heading for the Chiriqui volcano, about 285 miles west of the capital.

JERUSALEM

Officers exonerated over cluster bombs

The Israeli army on Monday said it will not press charges against officers who ordered the use of cluster bombs during last year’s war in Lebanon, brushing off international criticism that the weapons unnecessarily put Lebanese civilians at risk.

Announcing the results of a more than yearlong probe, the army said investigators determined Israel’s use of cluster bombs was a “concrete military necessity” and did not violate international humanitarian law. Lebanese officials accused the army of covering up war crimes.

Cluster bombs open in flight and scatter dozens of bomblets over wide areas. The United Nations and human rights groups have accused Israel of dropping about 4 million cluster bomblets during its 34-day war against the Hezbollah guerrilla group.

They say as many as 1 million bomblets failed to explode and now endanger civilians, and earlier this year, the U.S. State Department said Israel probably misused American-made cluster bombs in civilian areas. More than 30 people have been killed by cluster bomb and land mine explosions in Lebanon since the 2006 summer war.

SEOUL, South Korea

Captains arrested over role in oil spill

The captains of a barge and its tugboat have been arrested on charges of causing the accident that led to South Korea’s worst-ever oil spill, a coast guard official said today.

The Dec. 7 spill occurred after a wire linking the barge and tugboat was cut in high winds, sending the barge slamming into a supertanker. The tanker leaked 78,920 barrels of oil into South Korea’s western waters, creating a spill nearly a third of the size of the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster that sent 260,000 barrels of oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound.

The two South Korean captains were charged with professional negligence and violation of the ocean pollution law, a coast guard officer said.

The officer said his office was also investigating the Indian captain of the Hong Kong-registered tanker, Hebei Spirit, for any wrongdoing.

About 490,000 coast guard officers, soldiers, residents and volunteers have taken part in efforts to clean up the spill.

MOSCOW

Putin pooch part of satellite talks

Russia’s satellite navigation system is still taking shape, but President Vladimir Putin already has a plan for how to use it: to keep tabs on his black labrador.

Putin on Monday listened to First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov as he briefed the cabinet on the development of GLONASS, the acronym for Global Navigation Satellite System. The Russian leader then asked: “When will I be able to buy the necessary equipment for my dog Koni so that she doesn’t run too far?”

Ivanov responded that collars for dogs and cats with satellite-guided positioning equipment will be available for private consumers in the middle of next year.