Sana'a, Yemen - Forty-five Africans drowned after a boat carrying them from Somalia across the Gulf of Aden capsized in deep waters off Yemen, the Yemeni Interior Ministry said Saturday.

The boat, carrying 46 would-be migrants from Somalia and Ethiopia, capsized Friday night about 95 kilometres off the south-eastern Yemeni port of Mukalla, the ministry said in a statement.

An Ethiopian passenger and three traffickers were able to get safely to shore, the ministry said. The smugglers were arrested.

Los Angeles - A playful octopus managed to disassemble a valve in her enclosure and flood a California aquarium with 760 litres of seawater, it was reported Friday.

The two-spotted, tiny octopus at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium apparently swam to the top of her enclosure and took apart the valve of the recycling system.

"It grabbed the tube that pulls out the water and caused it to spray outside the tank," the aquarium's education specialist Nick Fash told the Los Angeles Times.

Rio de Janeir

Washington  - Afghanistan is making inroads in stemming an opium drug trade that has fuelled a growing insurgency in the war- torn country, according to an annual report on the global drug trade by the US State Department Friday.

But the US singled out Myanmar, as well as Latin American powers Venezuela and Bolivia for having "failed demonstrably" to combat drug trafficking in their own countries.

Washington  - Afghanistan is making inroads in stemming an opium drug trade that has fuelled a growing insurgency in the war- torn country, according to an annual report on the global drug trade by the US State Department Friday.

But the US singled out Myanmar, as well as Latin American powers Venezuela and Bolivia for having failed demonstrably" to combat drug trafficking in their own countries.

Dublin  - An armed gang escaped with up to 6.2 million euros (7.9 million dollars) in a raid on an Irish bank in central Dublin after kidnapping an employee and family members, including a five- year-old girl, police said Friday.

The six-strong gang forced the worker into a central branch of the Bank of Ireland in Dublin as they held his girlfriend, her mother and her five-year-old granddaughter at gunpoint.