World in brief

Robbers who killed U.S. tourist still at large

GUATEMALA CITY - Hundreds of police searched the Guatemalan countryside Thursday for a gunmen who attacked and robbed a minibus of American tourists, killing a man from Utah.

Police set up roadblocks, but "there still is no one captured," police spokesman Faustino Sanchez said.

Thirteen members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were headed from the mountain city of Quetzaltenango to the Mexican border on Wednesday when five men with automatic weapons intercepted their bus about 120 miles west of the capital.

Most of the tourists were from Salt Lake City and Ogden, Utah.

Survivors told police the gunmen opened fire to halt the bus, wounding the driver and killing Brett Richards, 52, an architect from Ogden who died en route to a hospital.

Police said the group was on a vacation, not a formal religious mission.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Government opponents launched a two-day strike that shut down most businesses in the capital Thursday, the latest in a series of sometimes-violent protests in the Caribbean nation.

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said he was "very disturbed" about the deteriorating situation in Haiti.

Powell spoke a day after the latest protest left three dead and more than two dozen injured. Since mid-September, at least 45 have been killed and more than 100 wounded during demonstrations.

Tensions have been rising since Aristide's party won 2000 legislative elections that observers said were flawed. The opposition refuses to participate in new elections unless Aristide steps down, but he says he will serve out his term until 2006.

HAVANA - Cuba's top diplomat for North America on Thursday defended a diplomat recently expelled from the United States and rejected U.S. officials' accusations that he had associated with criminal elements.

The expulsion of Roberto Socorro Garcia, a third secretary at the Cuban mission in Washington, was carried out last month without announcement.

U.S. officials said last week that Socorro was expelled for associating with criminal elements but didn't elaborate further. But one news report said he had been linked to drug trafficking.

Rafael Dausa Cespedes, the ministry's director for North America, denied that Socorro had "undertaken activities that were damaging to the American government or that violated his diplomat status."

ROSEAU, Dominica - Dominica's education minister was sworn in as the Caribbean island's prime minister Thursday, two days after former leader Pierre Charles died of an apparent heart attack.

Roosevelt Skerrit, 31, a former high school teacher, is the island's youngest prime minister since independence in 1978. He was chosen by the Dominica Labor Party, the country's main political party with 10 of Parliament's 21 seats.

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