A 16-YEAR-OLD student from Michigan tricked her parents into getting her a passport and then flew off to the Middle East to be with a West Bank man she met on MySpace. com.

US officials in Jordan persuaded her to turn around and go home before she reached the West Bank. She was on her way home yesterday.

MySpace. com is a social networking Web site with more 72 million members that lets users post photos, blogs and journals. There have been scattered accounts of sexual predators targeting minors they met through the site.

Katherine disappeared on Monday after talking her family into getting her a passport by saying she was going to Canada with friends.

$5m bounty for Mexican drug baron

THE US has offered a reward of $5m ( 3.95m) for information leading to the capture of the man they say heads the feared 'Gulf Cartel', believed to smuggle tons of cocaine and marijuana north from Mexico each year.

US Ambassador Tony Garza, in a statement, called Jorge Eduardo Costilla "the linchpin of a network of drug dealers and murderers" and said he is charged with 12 counts of drug trafficking and money laundering.

Bosnian war crimes suspect extradited

RUSSIA has handed over a Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect who was for years hiding in Siberia until authorities detained him last year.

The Bosnian State Court said Dragan Zelenovic was appearing yesterday in front of the judge. Zelenovic, a former military police officer, has been a fugitive since his 1996 indictment for alleged crimes against humanity during the 1992 Bosnian Serb assault on his hometown of Foca, in eastern Bosnia. He was handed him over to Bosnian authorities on Thursday.

Two Afghan aid workers shot dead

SUSPECTED militants on a motorbike gunned down two Afghan aid workers as fresh violence across the country left nine people dead, including a provincial security chief, officials said yesterday.

A third aid worker was wounded in Thursday's attack in northern Balkh province, said Sher Jahn Durani, spokesman for the provincial police chief. The militants opened fire on the three workers in a village in Chimtal district where they were helping farmers. It wasn't immediately clear who was behind the attack, said Durani, who did not have the name of the Afghan aid agency the victims worked for.