Iran
Judiciary bans opposition group
Iran's hard-line judiciary dealt a heavy blow Sunday to the country's reform movement, banning the nation's only real opposition group and closing down four pro-reform newspapers, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
Accusing Iran's Freedom Movement of seeking to overthrow the Islamic establishment, the Tehran Revolutionary Court banned the group and threatened to prosecute offenders.
Meanwhile, four reformist papers were ordered to stop publishing because of their "numerous and continuous violations of the law," state-run Tehran radio reported.
The Freedom Movement, which advocates a democratic government based on Islamic ideology but not run by clerics, does not have legal status but had been tolerated by Iranian authorities and enjoyed limited freedom.
Havana
Castro vows socialism will live on after him
President Fidel Castro told Tribune Co. executives and reporters in an interview published Sunday that the future of Cuba's one-party socialism will be safe after he dies and that no successor could change the system against the will of the island's citizens.
"The pope can't turn his followers into Muslims. No one has the power in this country to change its course," he told members of a visiting Tribune Co. delegation Friday.
Excerpts of the interview were published in separate stories in Sunday's Chicago Tribune and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale both Tribune Co. newspapers that will jointly operate the company's news bureau here.
The meeting was called to mark the formal opening of the bureau, which was inaugurated with a reception Wednesday evening.
France
Socialists take power in Paris, Lyon
The Socialists wrested Paris City Hall from the nearly quarter-century grip of President Jacques Chirac's conservative party on Sunday, provisional election results showed, dealing a stinging blow to France's chief of state.
The left also took Lyon, another longtime bastion of the right, in Sunday's round of municipal elections, but suffered numerous losses in other cities where Chirac's camp made gains.
But Paris where Chirac served as mayor for 18 years was the plum of the vote.
Socialist Bertrand Delanoe, 50, declared victory over Philippe Seguin, a former leader of Chirac's Rally for the Republic party, or RPR, late Sunday, calling his win a "choice for profound change."
The election results were to be confirmed today by the French Interior Ministry.
Haiti
Shipwreck toll >expected to top 50
Seventeen people trying to reach Puerto Rico died after their boat crashed on a coral reef off the Haiti coast, authorities said. More than 40 others were presumed dead Sunday.
Survivor Carlos Pinero told authorities about 60 Dominicans were aboard the sailboat when it left the southern Dominican coastal town of La Romana. It had apparently been adrift for 24 days in the Caribbean before Thursday's accident.
Sixteen bodies have washed up on shore at Ile-a-Vache, a small Haitian island about 90 miles southwest of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.
One of three known survivors died Friday night and a second survivor was in stable condition, said Karen Ramirez, a spokeswoman from the Dominican Embassy in Haiti.
There was no official search for survivors. The bodies, badly decomposed, were to be buried in a mass grave in Haiti, Ramirez said.
Indonesia
Stampede to see band kills four girls at mall
Four teen-age girls were crushed to death Sunday in a shopping mall in Jakarta when hundreds of fans panicked while trying to catch a glimpse of the British boy band a1.
The four band members were "devastated" and canceled the rest of their tour in Asia, an a1 spokesman in London said. They were to return to Britain immediately,
Some 1,500 fans hundreds more than expected showed up at a record store at Taman Anggrek shopping mall to see the band, security guards said. Panic broke out when fans tried to escape the crush by rushing to the mall's exits
In the Philippines, the band was forced to cancel an appearance at a music store after some 20,000 fans turned up when organizers were expecting only about 1,000, according to the band's Web site, www.a1-online.com/
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