Pakistan: Samples from body sent for DNA analysis

Hair and blood samples from a dismembered body were sent for DNA testing Friday as authorities sought to confirm whether they had found the remains of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

The body was removed from a grave on property Pakistan state television said was owned by Al-Rashid Trust, a group the United States has identified as a terrorists.

The body was found near a blood-spattered shed where authorities believe Pearl was held before his videotaped murder. Samples of blood on the walls were taken for DNA testing. A jacket resembling the track suit Pearl was photographed wearing was found buried in the grave with the body, authorities said. The body was cut into 10 pieces, including a severed head.

It could be a week before the results of DNA tests are known, Police Chief Kamal Shah told reporters in Karachi.

Mexico City: Salinas investigation ends without resolution

A Swiss judge has closed a six-year investigation into how $130 million got into the Swiss bank accounts of the brother of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, at least partly because of an alleged lack of cooperation by the Mexican government.

Judge Paul Perraudin said this week that he was sending the case back to Mexican investigators without resolving it. He had been probing allegations that the money had come from drug traffickers’ bribes or other corruption.

The ex-president’s brother, Raul Salinas, is serving 50 years for ordering the 1994 murder of a politician and former brother-in-law, Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu. Murder and money-laundering allegations were part of a broad scandal that has muddied the name of the former president, whose term expired in 1994.

Berlin: Media not allowed to say president dyes his hair

Hair ye, hair ye: Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s rich chestnut locks are God’s own creation.

A German court Friday banned the media from even suggesting that the 58-year-old leader has his hair dyed.

On April 12, Schroeder went to court in Hamburg to quash a German news agency story quoting image consultant Sabine Schwind von Egelstein that the chancellor “would be more credible if he didn’t dye his gray hair.”

“Whoever suggests I’m coloring my hair is suggesting that I am an established liar,” said the chancellor in a rare public comment.

The court establish a form of prior restraint that would prevent any future second-guessing of his grooming.

He said the news wire would be fined $225,000 if it repeated von Egelstein’s allegation.

China: Block lifted on some Western Web sites

China has stopped blocking access to the Web sites of at least three Western news organizations that Chinese have long been barred from seeing.

The Web sites of The Associated Press, Reuters and The Washington Post were accessible Friday from Internet cafes in Beijing and Shanghai.

Other media sites, including CNN and Taiwanese newspapers, still were blocked, as were organizations deemed subversive, such as the banned Falun Gong spiritual group.

The Shanghai police Internet Safety Monitoring Office would not say why the sites were made accessible after years of blocking, or how long access would last. Analysts said China may have lifted the blocks to attract foreign investors.