London: Prime minister’s wife suffers miscarriage

Cherie Blair, wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, suffered a miscarriage and received treatment in hospital, Bloomberg News reports.

Cherie Blair, 47, was admitted Monday night to London’s Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, where surgeons operated on her. She “came through the operation well and is resting,” the prime minister’s Downing Street office said in a statement, adding that she left the hospital Tuesday.

Known by her maiden name of Cherie Booth in her professional capacity as a lawyer, Cherie Blair is the mother of four children. The youngest, Leo, was born in May 2000.

Peru: Government eases up on cocaine policy

Peru has agreed to lighten up anti-drug operations in response to protests by coca farmers, the second move in just over a month that jeopardizes U.S.-backed efforts to fight the cocaine trade.

The pact affects coca cultivation in the Ene-Apurimac river basin, Peru’s second-largest coca producing valley.

It follows one in late June in which the government suspended a coca eradication program in the Huallaga River valley in the eastern Amazon jungle region.

That agreement ended a three-day sit-in by about 7,700 coca farms in the Andean city of Ayacucho. They had marched more than 90 miles from their farms in the eastern Amazon jungle, and threatened to march to the capital, Lima, some 200 miles away.

Bolivia: New president sworn in

U.S.-educated businessman Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada was sworn in as president Tuesday and immediately announced emergency measures aimed at lifting South America’s poorest nation out of a steep economic decline.

Sanchez de Lozada’s emergency program is designed to create jobs through five major public works projects, including the construction of a cross-country highway and public housing.

With Bolivia’s economy stuck in recession, crime and unemployment are on the rise in the Andean nation, where six of 10 people live in poverty.

Sanchez de Lozada will serve a five-year term.

India: Nine Hindus killed in attack by militants

A band of suspected Islamic militants armed with grenades and automatic rifles sneaked into a camp of Hindus making a Himalayan pilgrimage in Kashmir, killing nine of them and wounding 27 before dawn Tuesday.

It was the sixth attack on the Hindu faithful since the monthlong pilgrimage began. Twenty-four have been killed in all.

In other parts of the disputed region, police said four suspected militants and three soldiers were killed in what appeared to be stepped-up attacks by separatist guerrillas.

The militants are fighting to make the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir independent or to merge it with predominantly Muslim Pakistan.

Mexico: Crash kills at least 33

The brakes apparently failed on a 26-year-old bus Tuesday before it plowed through a highway toll booth and slammed into a concrete wall in western Mexico, killing at least 33 people 10 of them children headed for a re-enactment of the Last Supper. About 20 people were injured.

The 1976-model bus had picked up passengers in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero and was headed to the city of Guadalajara when the accident occurred in Zinapecuaro, 110 miles west of Mexico City.

The victims all were members of the Luz Del Mundo, or Light of the World, a conservative Christian church based in Guadalajara, and were planning to participate in the annual re-enactment of the Last Supper that draws up to 300,000 people.