London

Exceptionally rare American coin found

A 351-year-old coin, one of the first ever minted in colonial America, has been found in Britain, an auction house said Wednesday.

The rare New England silver sixpence turned up when relatives of a deceased British man were rummaging through his belongings. They sent it to an expert for identification.

“It just came through the post in an unregistered envelope but when I opened it I recognized the sixpence straight away and my heart leapt. It is exceedingly rare and a very exciting find,” said Rick Coleman, the senior valuer at Bonhams auctioneers.

He said that the silver coin is about the size of a penny with “NE” for New England stamped on one side and “VI” on the other. It is one of only nine New England silver sixpences known to exist, all minted in Boston in 1652.

Bonhams expects their sixpence to sell for around $33,200 to $41,500.

Somalia

Police arrest four in aid worker’s killing

Police in northwestern Somalia have detained four suspects in connection with the killing of a prize-winning Italian aid worker, the region’s interior minister said Wednesday.

A lone gunman shot and killed Annalena Tonelli on Sunday in Borama, a town 580 miles northwest of Mogadishu. She was killed in the grounds of the tuberculosis hospital she had founded there.

Borama is in the region known as Somaliland, which set up its own administration and declared its independence from the rest of Somalia in 1991 as civil war raged across much of the southern part of the country following the ouster of longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

Somaliland’s Interior Minister Ismael Adan Osman said authorities were “90 percent” certain that one of the men was the killer and the other three were connected to the killing.

He described the shooting as an “isolated incident” and said the motive was still not known.

Colombia

Car bomb explosion kills 6 in capital

A car bomb exploded in central Bogota early Wednesday, killing six people and injuring at least 12, authorities said.

The explosion occurred in a commercial area filled with electronic, clothing and liquor stores as employees were arriving for work. The goods sold in the San Andresito neighborhood are contraband and much cheaper than those in legal shopping districts.

Residents had alerted police to a suspicious Jeep in the neighborhood, police Gen. Jorge Daniel Castro told RCN Radio. When police went to check it out, the bomb exploded, killing two officers, he said.

Four civilians also were killed, and at least 12 were injured, Mayor Antanas Mockus told Caracol Radio.

Police have recently reported that right-wing paramilitary groups have been muscling their way in to San Andresito and extorting vendors there.

Denmark

Crown prince to wed Australian commoner

Denmark’s future king, Crown Prince Frederik, and his Australian fiancee greeted thousands of people from the balcony of a downtown palace shortly after their engagement was announced Wednesday.

Some 20,000 people, waving Danish and Australian paper flags, cheered Frederik and Mary Donaldson at the Christian IX palace, one of four Renaissance-style mansions that make up Amalienborg Castle.

At a state council meeting earlier in the day, Margrethe told the Danish government that her 35-year-old son, the heir to the throne of Europe’s oldest ruling monarchy, would marry the 31-year-old from Hobart, Tasmania.

Frederik and Donaldson will be married May 14 at Copenhagen’s Lutheran neoclassicist cathedral, Our Lady’s Church.