LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Locals were freed, the attackers made clear from the beginning that only foreigners were a target. Expats were detained.”

Liviu Floria, a Romanian mechanic who survived the Algeria hostage situation.

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Snow, ice disrupt European flights

LONDON - Hundreds of flights were canceled in Britain, France and Germany on Monday as snow and ice blanketed western Europe.

London’s Heathrow airport canceled about 130 flights, 10 percent of the daily total, compared with 20 percent on Sunday.

Flights have been disrupted since Friday at Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport, which has seen long lines and stranded passengers camping out on the floors of its terminals.

Heathrow says it has spent millions improving its winter resilience since the airport was virtually shut down by snow for several days in December 2010. But it says low visibility means it must leave bigger gaps between planes, triggering delays and cancellations.

Forty percent of flights were canceled at Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports in Paris.

Frankfurt airport, Germany’s largest, told the dpa news agency Monday that 180 flights had been canceled because of icy conditions caused by freezing rain overnight.

Drone kills 3 of 5 in pickup in Yemen

SANA, Yemen - A U.S. drone airstrike on a vehicle Monday east of Yemen’s capital of Sana killed three suspected al-Qaida militants and wounded two others, according to security officials.

The airstrike was the third to target al-Qaida militants in the area since Saturday and indicated an uptick in the U.S. military battle against the terror organization in Yemen. On Saturday, two U.S. drone strikes killed eight people, including two known al-Qaida militants, in Marib province.

The security officials said the five targeted Monday were traveling in a pickup when it was hit in Marib, about 25 miles outside its main city with the same name. Two were killed on site, while another died hours later of his wounds, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

Dissident troops seize Eritrea ministry

JOHANNESBURG - More than 100 dissident soldiers stormed the Ministry of Information in the small East African nation of Eritrea on Monday and read a statement on state TV saying the country’s 1997 constitution would be put into force, two Eritrea experts said.

The soldiers held all of the ministry workers - including the daughter of the president - in a single room, said Leonard Vincent, co-founder of a Paris-based Eritrean radio station. The soldiers’ broadcast on state TV said the country’s 1997 constitution would be reinstated and all political prisoners freed, but the broadcast was cut off after only two sentences were read and the signal has been off air the rest of the day, Vincent said.

By late afternoon, there were indications the soldiers’ attempt would fail. A military tank sat in front of the Ministry of Information but the streets of the capital, Asmara, were quiet and no shots had been fired, said a Western diplomat in Eritrea who wasn’t authorized to be identified by name.

Vincent stopped short of calling it a coup d’etat and said it wasn’t immediately clear whether the action was a well-organized coup attempt or what he called a “kamikaze crash.”

Later Monday, government soldiers surrounded the ministry, an indication the action by the dissident soldiers had failed, said Martin Plaut, a fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies in Britain.

Trains hit head-on in Vienna; 41 hurt

VIENNA - Two trains packed with morning commuters crashed head-on Monday in Vienna after a state railway employee apparently forgot to activate a signal. Railway officials said 41 people were injured, five seriously.

A statement from OBB, Austria’s state railway, said initial investigations show that a supervisor neglected to trip a signal after manually activating a rail switch. The switch usually works automatically and sets off the signal but was stuck because of snow and ice.

The accident on the city’s outskirts occurred with the two trains heading in opposite directions on a single set of tracks. The signal would have normally warned one of them to wait on another set of tracks until the other one passed.

The statement said the accident was apparently due to “human error of the responsible supervisor.”

Front Section, Pages 5 on 01/22/2013