By Jonathan Allen NEW YORK (Reuters) - Police rescued a businessman from a New York City warehouse where he had been held captive for a month by kidnappers who demanded a $3 million ransom from his family in Ecuador, authorities said. Acting on a tip from the victim's mother, police found Pedro Portugal, 52, in the warehouse with his hands bound in cloth and duct tape. He had been abducted in the borough of Queens on April 18 by a man who approached him, flashing what looked like a police badge, prosecutors said.

A court in Russia's Urals region on Wednesday began hearing a request for parole by one of the members of radical opposition rock group Pussy Riot sentenced to two years in a prison camp over a stunt in a church. The court in the city of Berezniki in the Perm region of the Urals started hearing the request by Maria Alyokhina, one of two members of the group serving sentences in remote prison camps. Alyokhina was not present in court and instead followed proceedings via a video-link up from her prison camp in Berezniki, Russian news agencies reported from the courtroom.

Buenos Aires, May 20 (EFE).- Gen. Rafael Videla, the emblematic figure of the military junta that ruled Argentina from 1976-1983, died of a heart attack resulting from injuries and broken bones he suffered five days earlier when he fell in the shower, judicial sources told the official Telam news agency. The erstwhile strongman was found dead Friday inside his cell at the prison where he was serving a life sentence for crimes against humanity.

Five suspects in the Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster asked for plea bargains at indictment hearings in Italy on Tuesday, which could leave only the captain Francesco Schettino facing trial. The five include Roberto Ferrarini, the director of ship owner Costa Crociere's crisis unit, and Jacob Rusli Bin, the luxury liner's Indonesian helmsman, as well as three other crew members. Schettino's lawyers also asked for a plea bargain but the request was immediately turned down by the prosecutor's office, leaving only five plea bargain requests before the pre-trial judge.