Bogota  - The Colombian Army on Tuesday detonated a bicycle- bomb that alleged leftist rebels had planted near an Army garrison in the north-eastern province of Arauca, on the border with Venezuela.

An Army statement said that members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) had planted the bike with a view to "attacking the troops" in the town of Tame.

"When they noticed the strange presence of the bomb, the military officers immediately proceeded to cordoning off the area and defusing it in a controlled way," the statement said.

Abuja  - A Nigerian militant group that two days ago called off an "oil war" accused government troops Tuesday of an unprovoked attack on other militant groups in the oil-rich Niger Delta.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) attacked platforms, pipelines and oil flow-stations owned by Chevron, Shell and Agip during a week-long "oil war" it declared after an earlier attack by Nigerian troops.

Mexico City  - An armed commando kidnapped 10 members of one family in a rural area of the Mexican state of Michoacan, in western Mexico, early Tuesday, according to media reports.

Michoacan, the native state of Mexican President Felipe Calderon, is among the most troubled by drug violence in Mexico. Last week, an attack on a crowded public celebration of Mexican independence left eight people dead and some 130 injured in the state capital, Morelia.

San Francisco  - Science museums are often a collection of stodgy exhibits and isolated experiments stuffed into grand, overbearing buildings.

But a new one opening Saturday in San Francisco's fabled Golden Gate Park aims to change that, stressing the all-encompassing role of science in the life of the planet and its inhabitants.

As might be expected from a 480-million-dollar structure in the country's eco-capital, the California Academy of Sciences hopes to be known as one of the greenest buildings on earth - a title that is literal as well as metaphoric.

The building's signature statement is a living roof topped with a rolling meadow filled with wildflowers. The entire structure is encased in glass and supported by slender columns.

Mexico City  - A bus crashed into a runaway circus elephant on Tuesday, killing one person and injuring 10, police said.

The four-ton female elephant also died, and was left lying on the road that links Mexico City to the pyramids of Teotihuacan.

"I untied her so she could eat. She had never done this before, but she suddenly rushed to break the gate. I could not stop her," the animal's caretaker, Marcelino Ramos, 22, told Mexican media.

Helsinki  - A 22-year-old student killed 10 persons Tuesday and wounded at least two more in a school massacre in western Finland, then turned the gun on himself.

Officials disclosed later that police had met with the alleged suspect on the eve of the killing spree. The gunman, also a student at the school, died of his self-inflicted wounds in hospital.

The shootings took place at the trade school in Kauhajoki, about 300 kilometres north-west of Helsinki.