Saudi Arabia: Sentencing comes for bombing suspects

Saudi Arabia has sentenced some of the people it arrested for the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing that killed 19 U.S. servicemen and injured hundreds, the deputy interior minister was quoted as saying Saturday.

Prince Ahmed, however, did not say how many people were sentenced or what the sentences were.

Last June, the United States indicted 14 people 13 Saudis and a Lebanese for the 1996 bombing by members of the dissident Saudi Hezbollah group on the complex in Dhahran, near Khobar.

The United States does not have an extradition treaty with Saudi Arabia.

London: Rail conductors stage 1-day strike

Workers at one of Britain’s largest train operators walked off the job for 24 hours on Saturday and vowed to hold more strikes until they are given more pay.

The strike by train conductors severely cut services on Arriva Trains Northern.

Arriva, which serves the cities of Manchester and Liverpool, and a broad area of northern England, said 55 percent of its services ran Saturday, covering 75 percent of the network.

Stan Herschel, the union’s regional organizer, said the latest 4 percent pay rise offer fell well short of workers’ demands.

Mexico City: Land dispute blamed in mass slaughter

Gunmen ambushed a truckload of people on a mountain road in southern Mexico, killing 26, state police said Saturday.

Oaxaca Police Commander Jonas Gutierrez Coro said the Friday evening attack apparently involved a land dispute.

According to a news release from the state attorney general’s office, truck driver Alberto Antonio Perez said he was driving the passengers from Santiago Sochiltepec when gunmen stopped the truck about 7 p.m. Friday as it reached a settlement called Agua Fria.

He said the gunmen ordered him and his son to leave, then they opened fire on the truck.

Gov. Jose Murat ordered Atty. Gen. Sergio Santibanez to the scene in the rugged mountains about 30 miles southwest of the state capital, Oaxaca City. More than 160 state police along with almost two dozen judicial and police investigators were sent to the scene.

Cuba: Castro rejects Bush’s call for democracy

In a blistering speech before hundreds of thousands of people in a drenching rain Saturday in Holguin, President Fidel Castro said the democracy President Bush wants to see in Cuba would be a corrupt and unfair system that ignores the poor.

“For Mr. W, democracy only exists where money solves everything and where those who can afford a $25,000-a-plate dinner an insult to the billions of people living in the poor, hungry and underdeveloped world are the ones called to solve the problems of society and the world,” Castro said.

Castro’s speech was part of Cuba’s answer to Bush’s resolve, announced May 20 in Washington and Miami, to continue trade sanctions against Cuba until a “new government that is fully democratic” comes to the island nation.