Cute California mountain lion kittens get a check up

United States: Four new mountain lion kittens have been found by researchers studying the wild cats living in Southern California's Santa Monica Mountains, wildlife officials announced. Video posts showed the blue-eyed babies meowing and one feisty one hissing and even taking a swipe at the person filming her. The four female kittens are about 5½ weeks old and are the first litter that has been found in the Simi Hills, a small area of habitat between the Santa Monica and Santa Susana mountain ranges just north of Los Angeles. Researchers have added the four kittens to their ongoing study of mountain lions in the area. Their mother is a mountain lion researchers have been tracking since January. Researchers visited the kittens while their mother was away last week, taking tissue samples, conducting a general health check and marking them with ear tags. It's the 15th den the researchers have marked as part of their study of mountain lions in the region.

Nicaragua: Three people were shot dead in the city of Masaya as security forces and allied groups tried to regain control of the area, a human rights group reported, the two-month anniversary of political unrest that has shaken Nicaragua. Alvaro Leiva, director of the Nicaraguan Pro-Human Rights Association, said 40 people were also wounded in the clashes in Masaya that came a day after talks on finding a solution to the country's crisis were again suspended. Forces allied with President Daniel Ortega's Government moved to dismantle roadblocks maintained by protesters for over three weeks between Managua and Masaya, which is about 25km southeast of the capital. Video images broadcast by local television showed police and allied groups shooting towards people at the roadblocks, and later barricades and tree trunks were removed by heavy machinery. More than 170 people have died since April 19 amid a heavy-handed crackdown on protests that have broadened to demand Ortega's exit.

United States: A federal agency wants its wooly mammoth tusk back. The Bureau of Land Management in Alaska asked the public's help in recovering an approximately 10,000-year-old tusk stolen from the Campbell Creek Science Centre in east Anchorage. The woolly mammoth is Alaska's official state fossil. The tusk was on display when the centre was broken into on March 8. Anchorage police say a thief broke in through a window and took only the tusk, which weighs 45.4kg. The curved tusk is 1.7m-long.

Venezuela: The country's all-powerful National Constitutional Assembly has named as its new chief a man deemed by US officials to be an international drug trafficker. Socialist party boss Diosdado Cabello took the oath as the assembly's president. The international community condemned the Constitutional Assembly's formation last year as President Nicolas Maduro's move to rob power from the opposition-controlled National Assembly. Its formation sparked four months of deadly street protests.

Britain: A battery short circuit caused a small explosion at a London Underground station that injured five people, authorities said. British Transport Police said the incident did not seem to be related to terrorism. "The scene has been examined by specialist officers," London Metropolitan Police said. "It appears at this stage that the cause of the explosion was a battery short circuit. The Met Police and BTP are working together to establish the full facts." Police said they were not aware of any serious injuries in what the force called a "minor explosion" at Southgate Tube station in northwest London.

Yemen: Fierce fighting raged outside the airport of the crucial Yemeni city of Hodeida as thousands of pro-government fighters backed by a Saudi-led coalition battled Iranian-allied Shia rebels for control of the Red Sea port — the main passageway for food and aid supplies in a country teetering on the brink of famine. Coalition officials, meanwhile, displayed weapons captured on the battlefield that they said show Iran is now arming the insurgents, known as Houthis, something Iran has long denied despite reports by the United Nations and Western countries linking it to the rebels' arsenal.

- AP