St. Louis

Ex-employee charged in plant shooting

A former employee of a conveyor belt plant was charged Friday with opening fire and wounding a man at the suburban factory a day earlier.

Beltservice Corp. employees ran from the Earth City plant Thursday afternoon while the man fired repeatedly, exited to reload his shotgun in the parking lot and fired again. The gunman surrendered to police after a seven-hour standoff.

St. Louis County officials said Pelayo Errasti, 48, of St. Louis, was being held without bail on charges of armed criminal action and first-degree assault.

The injured employee, Jake Lewman, 61, was treated for a superficial wound to his leg, officials said.

California

Two stranded climbers rescued after storm

Two climbers who were stranded and spent the night on Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan after an early winter storm were rescued Friday, park officials said.

On Thursday, rescue teams pulled two other climbers off the mountain, along with the bodies of a Japanese couple who were caught on “The Nose” of El Capitan when the storm struck.

There were no remaining stranded hikers or climbers in the park as of Friday, said Ray Santos, a spokeswoman for Yosemite.

The two climbers rescued Friday initially turned down a request for help. Santos said they were eventually hoisted off the 3,200-foot monolith.

Georgia

Stranger takes over vacationer’s house

A Douglasville woman came home from vacation to find a stranger living there, wearing her clothes, changing utilities into her name and even ripping out carpet and repainting a room she didn’t like, authorities said.

Douglas County authorities say they can’t explain why Beverly Valentine, 54, broke into an empty home and started acting like it was her own.

During the 2 1/2 weeks the owner, Beverly Mitchell, was on vacation in Greece, Valentine allegedly redecorated the ranch home, ripping up carpet and taking down the owner’s pictures and replacing them with her own.

Mitchell was a complete unknown to Valentine, said Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Stan Copeland.

Valentine was being held in Douglas County Jail on a $25,000 bond. If convicted, she could face one to 20 years in prison.

West Virginia

Produce supplier closes after rash of salmonella

Publicity from a salmonella outbreak has put a West Virginia produce company out of business, even though inspections found no trace of the bacteria at the plant.

Company officials at Wheeling-based Coronet Foods met Friday with the plant’s 220 employees to begin helping them find other jobs.

The closure comes more than three months after 400 people in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and Maryland fell ill because they ate sandwiches with contaminated tomatoes at Sheetz convenience stores. Coronet was a supplier to Sheetz, but officials still do not know where the tomatoes became contaminated.

Coronet’s business declined after the outbreak, even though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in August found no evidence of salmonella at the company’s facility.

Paris

New ads aim to shock to fight anti-Semitism

A new advertising campaign to fight anti-Semitism in France features serene images of Jesus and Mary with the slur “Dirty Jew” scrawled across them as if in graffiti.

Underneath the picture appears the slogan: “Anti-Semitism: What if it were everyone’s problem?”

The advertisements, which will run in French newspapers beginning Tuesday over a period of about 10 days, were created by the Union of Jewish Students of France, or UEJF.

The UEJF said it recognized the startling nature of the images but that the goal was to grab people’s attention.

Tokyo

Typhoon death toll rises to 77 as bodies found

Rescue workers digging through sludge from mudslides and flooded rice paddies in western Japan recovered 14 more bodies Friday, raising the toll from the nation’s deadliest typhoon in more than a decade to 77. Fourteen people remained missing.

Typhoon Tokage ripped through western Japan earlier this week with high waves, triggering mudslides, demolishing homes and flooding dozens of communities before losing power and disappearing over the Pacific Ocean.

Rescue workers combed the sea and flooded towns for the missing, who were feared washed away.

As government officials assessed the financial damage done to homes, crops and businesses, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said he was ready to allocate public funds to cover repairs if necessary.

Havana

Castro remains awake during knee surgery

His kneecap shattered and his arm broken after a nasty fall, Fidel Castro refused to let doctors put him to sleep during surgery, showing his determination not to lose control of his nation’s affairs, if even for a moment.

Castro, 78, chose epidural anesthesia, commonly used in childbirth to reduce pain, so he could stay awake as surgeons used stainless steel wire to stitch together his left knee, broken in eight places, state-run media said Friday.

The three-hour-15-minute operation Thursday was “an unforgettable experience,” the Cuban president wrote afterward.

Castro stumbled and fell Wednesday night after speaking at a graduation ceremony in Santa Clara in central Cuba.

Gaza Strip

Palestinians shell Gaza in Hamas retaliation

Palestinian militants fired mortar rounds and a homemade rocket at Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip on Friday after Israel killed one of Hamas’ most important leaders and his aide in a missile strike.

Tens of thousands of angry Hamas supporters threatened revenge against Israel during the funeral procession for Adnan al-Ghoul, 46, a founder and deputy chief of the Hamas military wing who had been on Israel’s most-wanted list since 1990.

“Hamas is loyal to the blood of its martyrs and will continue on the path of holy war and resistance until we achieve victory by defeating the Zionists,” Ismail Hanieh, a top Hamas leader in Gaza, said in a rare public appearance at a Gaza City mosque.

Belgium

EU to provide $125M for Darfur peacekeeping

Officials said the European Union would provide up to $125 million to back African peacekeepers in Darfur, as the United Nations warned Friday that crucial relief convoys were in danger.

Gunmen in Darfur are attacking relief convoys, civilians and African villagers, the U.N.’s World Food Program said in a statement Friday. “The security situation in all three states of Darfur remains highly volatile, with road closures because of insecurity cutting into WFP’s ability to provide food,” it said.

Nonetheless, the agency said, it delivered 12,196 tons of food, enough to feed some 632,000 people since the beginning of October.

Some 1.2 million people in Darfur rely on food from the U.N. agency.

Nigeria

Two women to appeal stoning death sentences

A court in northern Nigeria has sentenced two women to death by stoning for allegedly committing adultery, and both will soon appeal the sentences, a human rights group said Friday.

The sentences, passed down in Nigeria’s Bauchi state in September and early October, are the first of their kind in over a year in the mainly Muslim north, where 12 states have introduced controversial Islamic Shariah criminal codes since 1999.

Under the code, sex outside wedlock is considered adultery if one of the partners is or has ever been married. If neither partner was ever married, then sex outside wedlock is condemned as “fornication,” punishable by whipping.

Costa Rica

Ex-president ordered detained during probe

A court on Friday ordered that former President Rafael Calderon be jailed for nine months as investigators probe corruption allegations.

Calderon was to be taken to a cell at the Reforma prison, 12 miles northwest of the capital, Justice Department spokeswoman Emilia Segura said.

Calderon, who served from 1990 to 1994, was detained at a courthouse on Thursday after testifying about allegations that money from a $40 million Finnish government loan wound up in his accounts.

Calderon has denied any wrongdoing, but has not made a detailed public defense. His attorney, Gonzalo Castellon, said he would appeal the ruling, saying it has “enormous gaps and inconsistencies.”

London

Iraqi officials trained on trying Saddam, deputies

U.S. and British officials provided a week of training in international law to about 30 Iraqi judges and prosecutors who will try Saddam Hussein and his top lieutenants, British officials said Friday.

The members of the Iraqi Special Tribunal attended the seminars in London last week and were addressed by legal experts from the United States and Britain, a Foreign Office spokesman said.

“We are keen to ensure that the special tribunal meets international standards and that people are kept up to date on international legal issues,” the spokesman said on customary condition of anonymity. “Of course there is a lot of work to be done.”

Tokyo

Japan finds another cow suspected of mad cow

A Holstein in western Japan tested positive for mad cow disease in a preliminary test conducted today, an official said.

If confirmed, the dairy cow would be Japan’s 15th animal with the fatal brain-wasting disease, known formally as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE.

The discovery came as agriculture and health officials from the United States and Japan were meeting in Tokyo to negotiate an end to Tokyo’s 10-month-old ban on American beef imports. The talks, originally scheduled for two days, had been extended to a third.

Preliminary tests on the cow from a ranch in the state of Mie turned up positive, Mie government official Itaru Okamoto said.

Russia

Chechen official says rebel ready to surrender

Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov is ready to give up his separatist fight and is seeking a way to negotiate with the Kremlin his surrender, a top Chechen security official said Friday.

Maskhadov, a former Chechen president, is trying to make contact with the federal government, said Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s first deputy prime minister.

At the same time, Kadyrov, who also leads a regional security force, said he would do all he can to capture Maskhadov and Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, who has claimed responsibility for terrorist attacks in Russia.

Washington, D.C.

More than 800 soldiers called to duty have failed to report

More than 800 former soldiers have failed to comply with Army orders to get back in uniform and report for duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, the Army said Friday. That is more than one-third of the total who were told to report to a mobilization station by Oct. 17.

Three weeks ago the number stood at 622 amid talk that any who refused to report for duty could be declared Absent Without Leave. Refusing to report for duty normally would lead to AWOL charges, but the Army is going out of its way to resolve these cases as quietly as possible.

In all, 4,166 members of the Individual Ready Reserve have received mobilization orders since July 6, of which 2,288 were to have reported by Oct. 17. The others are to report in coming weeks and months.

Of those due to have reported by now, 1,445 have done so, but 843 have neither reported nor asked for a delay or exemption.

Michigan

Pressure on Sinclair prompts more balanced Kerry show

Sinclair Broadcast Group’s one-hour “A POW Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media” on Friday night gave a large platform to charges surrounding Democratic nominee Sen. John F. Kerry’s anti-Vietnam War activity. But it also turned the spotlight on Sinclair itself, as the main player in a drama that was kicked off two weeks ago when the TV broadcaster announced plans to air “Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal,” an anti-Kerry documentary, days before the Nov. 2 presidential election.

After complaints from Democrats, threats of an advertiser boycott and shareholder questions, Sinclair said it would air only parts of the 42-minute film. In the end, the program incorporated about five minutes from “Stolen Honor,” mostly POWs talking about how Kerry’s actions had prolonged their ordeal, and included an interview with filmmaker Carlton Sherwood. But it also included footage from a recent film much more sympathetic to Kerry’s Vietnam experience, called “Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry.” That film’s director, George Butler, was also given his say.