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World in brief
Compiled from Times wires Toll in building collapse hits 8MOSCOW -- Investigators looked for clues Wednesday about what caused an explosion in a Moscow apartment building that killed at least eight people, as residents returned to salvage what they could from their destroyed homes. Emergency crews shifted their focus from rescue to recovery as hopes faded for finding any people alive. Workers pulled eight bodies from the wreckage, and Russian television reported that the dead included an infant, a 4-year-old and two teenagers. The explosion rocked the five-story building in northern Moscow late Tuesday, collapsing a section of the building. Officials said 11 apartments were destroyed, though the exact number of dead remained unclear because some residents may have been out at the time. Russian authorities said their preliminary investigation suggested a natural gas leak on the building's second floor was to blame, but made clear they were not ruling out terrorism. Tuesday's blast was reminiscent of a series of 1999 apartment house explosions in Moscow and other cities that killed 300 people and that authorities blamed on Chechen rebels. The first, on Sept. 9, 1999, was initially blamed on a gas leak as well. Mexico's Fox wants to reschedule Texas tripMEXICO CITY -- President Vicente Fox said Wednesday he hopes to reschedule a Texas trip he canceled last week to protest the state's execution of a Mexican citizen despite claims his legal rights had been violated. "We want to replace this trip and we'll be talking to Texas authorities, and to Texas businessmen and chambers. And we'll be talking to our paisanos (Mexican immigrants). We should replace this trip for maybe the first quarter of next year, once elections (in the United States) are over," Fox said. He said his government would continue to review the circumstances of more than 50 Mexicans on death row in the United States and lodge protests, especially if he believes a prisoner's rights have been violated. Chinese work to hold off floodwatersCHANGSHA, China -- Tens of thousands of workers in China's Hunan province worked Wednesday to hold back the rising waters of a lake that threatened to swamp a city and farming villages. In eastern Nepal, a landslide triggered by monsoon rains swept through a mountain village, leaving at least 65 people feared dead. Floods have swept away hundreds of thousands of homes from China to Bangladesh to India, displacing millions and leaving about 2,000 dead. In Hunan, officials were given special powers to commandeer labor, land and materials under an emergency order. Some 400 soldiers have joined 850,000 civilians battling to hold off flooding in rivers and Dongting Lake, where water has risen to danger levels along hundreds of miles of dikes. Rwanda ex-official pleads innocent to genocideARUSHA, Tanzania -- The former military chief of Rwanda pleaded innocent Wednesday to U.N. charges that he helped plan and carry out the 1994 genocide campaign that killed at least half a million people. Maj. Gen. Augustin Bizimungu, 50, entered his plea after listening grimly as charges of genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, crimes against humanity and rape were read out by the prosecution at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Bizimungu is accused of personally participating in the planning and the execution of the genocide. No trial date was set. 26 Colombians kidnapped from national parkBOGOTA, Colombia -- Suspected rebels kidnapped more than two dozen tourists from a national park on the Pacific coast, officials said Wednesday. As many as 26 people, all of them Colombians, were taken from a beach inside Ensenada Utria park near the town of Bahia Solano, 250 miles northeast of Bogota, police said. The mass kidnapping occurred Monday, a national holiday, when the park was full of tourists. Police didn't learn of the kidnapping until Wednesday because the area is isolated. Police blamed the kidnapping on the National Liberation Army, Colombia's second-largest rebel group. China loosens one-child policy for rural provinceBEIJING -- In a loosening of China's one-child policy, a rural province will let divorcees, coal miners and some other couples have more than one child beginning next month. Anhui province acted under a new provision giving local governments more power to tailor birth control policies to local needs. China imposed a strict one-child policy in the late 1970s as a way to brake its population, which now is about 1.26-billion. The government says the policy resulted in 300-million fewer births over the last decade.
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From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
