MOSCOW -- Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said yesterday that Russia will respond calmly to an increase in NATO ships in the Black Sea in the aftermath of the short war with Georgia, but promised that "there will be an answer."

Meanwhile, President Dmitry Medvedev sternly warned the West that it would lose more than Moscow would if it tried to punish Russia with sanctions over the war with Georgia.

Russia's reaction to NATO ships "will be calm, without any sort of hysteria. But of course, there will be an answer," Interfax quoted Mr. Putin as saying during a visit to Uzbekistan.

Asked by exactly what measures Russia would take in response to NATO ships in the Black Sea, Mr. Putin was quoted as answering, "You'll see."

As if to emphasize the country's strength -- its control over a growing percentage of European energy supplies -- Mr. Putin traveled to Uzbekistan to announce a deal that would tighten Russia's hand on Central Asian energy exports to the West.

KINSHASA, Congo -- A humanitarian aid flight carrying 17 people crashed while trying to land during a storm in remote eastern Congo, and all aboard were feared dead yesterday.

U.N. helicopters found the crash site -- about nine miles from the plane's destination near the Rwanda border -- but rugged terrain and fog prevented peacekeepers from landing yesterday to learn the fate of those on board, officials said.

Air Serv International, the Warrenton, Va.-based aid group that runs the twice-weekly aid delivery between Kisangani and Bukavu, said helicopter surveys suggested everyone on board was killed.

SAHARSA DISTRICT, India -- Hungry villagers rioted, desperate families swam for their lives and chaos spread across a wide swath of flooded plains in northern India yesterday as authorities mounted one of the country's largest relief efforts.

Soldiers and aid workers scrambled to reach hundreds of thousands of people still stranded on rooftops, trees and specks of dry land more than two weeks after monsoon rains caused the Kosi River to burst its banks and turn hundreds of square miles of Bihar state into a giant lake.

The army sent more than 5,000 soldiers to join rescue efforts, while officials said more than half of the 1.2 million stranded had been rescued. Officials did not yet have a precise tally of those killed by the flooding, but estimates ranged from dozens to thousands.

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran's parliament has indefinitely delayed a vote on proposed changes to the country's civil law that had angered an unusual coalition of women's rights activists and Iran's judiciary.

The opponents, more accustomed to disagreeing with one another than finding common cause, shared concerns that the legislation would promote polygamy and undermine women's financial independence.

The assembly decided Sunday to send the bill back to its legal committee for more work, a decision that analysts said would result in the removal of changes made by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's cabinet.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thailand's embattled leader struggled to keep the peace and his grip on power yesterday after declaring a state of emergency that was openly flouted by thousands of anti-government protesters in the capital.

While Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej sought to tamp down newly violent unrest pitting pro- and anti-government protesters, he also was hit by an electoral commission finding that could disband his party and bar him from politics.

Also in the world...

Mauritanian legislators selected eight colleagues yesterday to serve as a High Court that will try the recently ousted president. Lawmakers in this North African nation named four senators and four National Assembly members to judge deposed President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi on charges ranging from corruption to obstructing parliament... Hundreds of former Canadian soldiers will receive compensation for being assigned to participate in atomic bomb test explosions by the U.S. and British militaries in the 1960s, the Defense Ministry said yesterday. In total, 900 former soldiers or families of deceased veterans will receive payments of $22,000 each.