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Man says he killed 19 women and children

By TIMES WIRES
Published March 3, 2007

INDIA

A servant confessed to killing and sexually assaulting at least 19 children and women and stuffing their dismembered remains into a storm drain outside the house where he worked, officials said Friday. Up to 38 people vanished over two years in a well-to-do suburb of New Delhi. Nearly all victims were from poor families working as servants in the area. Surender Koli and his employer were arrested in December as police began unearthing the remains of 19 children and women. Residents said police had ignored reports of missing people and had been forced to start investigating when the smell from the drains became overpowering and human remains were seen in them. Six police officers have been fired.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

Guard ends search for Haitian boaters

The U.S. Coast Guard suspended its search Friday for nearly 50 Haitian migrants feared dead after their homemade boat caught fire in the Atlantic Ocean, an agency spokesman said. Two of the passengers were rescued Tuesday by two Americans on a sailboat. A nearly 31-hour search across 1,250 square miles yielded only the remains of five passengers. The migrants were traveling from the northern Haitian town of Cap-Haitien to the Turks and Caicos Islands when a fuel tank exploded north of the Dominican Republic and sank the fiberglass boat, the survivors told their rescuers.

DENMARK

Exports to Muslims fell after cartoons

Exports to Muslim countries fell by more than 11 percent in 2006 after a boycott of Danish goods to protest the publication of the prophet Mohammed cartoons, the government said Friday. Dairy products, dominated by the Scandinavian Arla Foods group, were worst-hit, with exports dropping 39 percent to $196-million, Statistics Denmark said. Overall, Danish exports grew by 9 percent last year to $97-billion. Exports to the 57 countries in the Organization of the Islamic Conference represent only 2.5 percent of exports. In September 2005, the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons that enraged Muslims- one of them showing Mohammed wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse.

Elsewhere

PAKISTAN: A bomb rigged to a bicycle exploded near a car carrying a judge in Multan on Friday, seriously wounding him and killing at least three people, police and doctors said. Mian Bashir Bhatti often hears cases against militants and suspected terrorists.

ITALY: Premier Romano Prodi won a confidence vote 342-253 in the lower house of Parliament on Friday, formally ending Italy's political crisis.

MOROCCO: King Mohammed VI pardoned 8,836 prisoners and reduced the sentences of 24,218 prisoners to celebrate the birth of his baby girl, the Justice Ministry said. Princess Lalla Salma gave birth to Lalla Khadija on Wednesday.

[Last modified March 3, 2007, 01:17:05]