World in brief

Atlanta-bound flight diverted by bomb note

DUBLIN, Ireland - A bomb scare on Delta Air Lines Flight 27 from Frankfurt, Germany, to Atlanta forced the plane to make an emergency landing at Shannon Airport, on the west coast of Ireland, just after midday local time Sunday.

The Irish police searched the plane and passengers' baggage, but nothing suspicious was found, a police spokesman said, and the plane was scheduled to depart again today. The police evacuated all 147 people on board within 10 minutes of the emergency landing and interviewed passengers about a note saying that a bomb was on board. The note was written on toilet paper and was found by crew members in the bathroom. Passengers, who were fingerprinted by the authorities, were taken to hotels to spend the night.

PARIS - Four days after France appointed Aissa Dermouche as its only foreign-born and Muslim prefect, his car was destroyed by a bomb near his home in Nantes early Sunday.

No one took responsibility for the explosion, which caused no injuries, officials said. President Jacques Chirac immediately condemned the bombing.

CAIRO - A French archaeological team has retrieved more than 1,000 bronze artifacts, including statues and busts of pharaonic gods and goddesses, from the site of an ancient port city off Egypt's northern coast, officials said Sunday.

The artifacts were found during archaeological surveys near Alexandria last month and date to the third through fifth centuries B.C. Among them are tools and containers used in religious rituals, said Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud, a senior official with Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The artifacts were found at the site of the ancient port of Heracleion, which is now under water. The team was led by French archaeologist Franck Goddio.

"BLACK BOX' FOUND: A French remote-controlled submarine searching the depths of the Red Sea retrieved the cockpit voice recorder from an Egyptian charter plane that crashed Jan. 3, killing all 148 people on board, officials said Sunday. On Saturday, the other "black box," the flight data recorder, was recovered from the wreckage of the Flash Airlines Boeing 737 that crashed minutes after taking off from the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik. Most of the victims were French tourists flying to Paris.

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