LONDON: Britons pay respects to queen mother

Tens of thousands of mourners braved a chilly wind and queued up outside Westminster Hall on Saturday to pay their final respects to the Queen Mother Elizabeth, whose coffin lay in state inside the Parliament building.

The royal matriarch died a week ago at 101.

Police estimated the crowd peaked at more than 50,000 and advised well-wishers to expect a wait of up to seven hours.

The queen mother will lie in state until her funeral Tuesday at Westminster Abbey.

GUATEMALA: Police arrest 12 for child-smuggling

Guatemalan police broke up a child-smuggling ring that shipped Salvadoran children to the United States to join their immigrant parents there, authorities announced Saturday.

The Friday raid netted 12 smugglers and 49 children from neighboring El Salvador. The parents had reputedly paid $5,000 to bring each child north.

The bust east of Guatemala City was the result of a three-month investigation launched after Mexican police arrested several people in January for allegedly smuggling Salvadoran children to Los Angeles. They found a half-dozen children being kept in deplorable conditions in Mexico City.

Puerto Rico: Vieques protests draw tear gas fire

Military police on Saturday fired tear gas at a crowd of demonstrators as officers detained a man and woman who they said broke onto restricted U.S. Navy land.

The incidents occurred during the sixth day of military exercises on the outlying Puerto Rico island of Vieques.

Tear gas was used to disperse the crowd, which according to Navy spokesman Lt. Corey Barker, was throwing rocks at military personnel.

Witnesses denied the claim.

Demonstrators routinely break onto Navy lands to thwart exercises on the firing range whose use by the Navy has raised anger that flared after off-target bombs killed a civilian guard in 1999. Opponents say the exercises harm the environment and health of Vieques’ 9,300 residents. The Navy denies that claim.

Puerto Rico: Vieques protests draw tear gas fire

Warning “our patience has limits,” Cuba’s foreign minister lashed out at the United States Saturday over allegations that U.S. officials are distributing radios so Cubans can listen to pro-American broadcasts.

Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque also accused the United States of conducting “electronic espionage” at its office in Havana.

Washington has not publicly responded to the allegations.

Cuba complained to the United States earlier last week about alleged distribution of more than 500 shortwave radios tuned to the U.S. government’s Radio Marti station, run by Cuban exiles opposed to Fidel Castro’s government.

TOKYO: Japanese subsidiary, G.M. ink tire agreement

The U.S. subsidiary of Japan’s Bridgestone Corp. has concluded a contract to provide tires to American automaker General Motors Corp., a newspaper reported Sunday.

Bridgestone/Firestone, the U.S. unit, will begin supplying the tires as early as this month, the Nihon Keizai daily said. It did not identify its source for the report. Spokesmen at Bridgestone were unavailable for comment.

The paper said that Bridgestone/Firestone estimated it would provide about 2.5 million tires a year for 500,000 vehicles under the contract.

Bridgestone’s business has been hurt by a tire recall at Bridgestone/Firestone in 2000. Most of the recalled tires were on Ford Explorers.