Hundreds of Chinese laborers are holding 12 Israeli staff members hostage on a resort construction site in Turks and Caicos.

The workers refuse to let the Israelis, from the Ashtroom real estate company, leave the project site in West Caicos until the Chinese manpower agency that hired them pays their back wages and returns the $15,000 each person invested to be able to work on the island.

Two French nationals held hostage by Somalian pirates since September 2 were rescued by the French army, in an operation that also resulted in the death of one pirate and the capture of six others.

The office of President Nicolas Sarkozy said Jean-Yves and Bernadette Delane are safe. Sarkozy gave the green light on Monday for the French army to carry out the operations.

U.S. Coast Guard authorities seized four smugglers and seven tons of cocaine with an estimated street value of $8.4 million.

The cache was seized aboard a stateless, self-propelled, semi-submersible vessel about 350 miles west of Guatemala in the waters of the Eastern Pacific Ocean on Saturday.

Two men and a juvenile have been charged with possessing more than 1,000 marijuana plants with the intent to distribute after more that 5,000 plants were found growing at a Girl Scout camp.

Mario Comacho, 44, and Mariano Gonzales, 38, were charged with growing thousands of marijuana plants on land belonging to the Limberlost Girl Scout Council, which runs Camp Ella J. Logan in the area where the plants were discovered by Indiana State Troopers while searching the land by plane.

A small seaside community is for a 21 ft. great white shark swimming in the local lake.

A fisherman netted the shark in Tuggerah Lake, which opens to the Pacific Ocean 60 miles north of Sydney, but when he realized the shark was bigger than his 18-foot boat he let it go.