Mexico

UNICEF: Authorities must help halt killings

UNICEF called on Mexican authorities Friday to stop a string of killings of young girls in this border city as one of the most recent victims, a 7-year-old whose body was hidden in a barrel and covered with cement, was buried.

UNICEF, the United Nations’ child welfare organization, said four young girls have been found murdered – some sexually abused – in the city so far this year.

The girls’ ages tends to separate their cases from more than 100 largely unsolved slayings of young women since 1993 in the Mexican border state of Chihuahua. Victims’ relatives have often accused police in the past of extracting confession under torture and conducting sloppy investigations.

Patricia Gonzalez, Chihuahua’s attorney general, said experts have determined that three men – one possibly a serial sexual killer – were responsible for the death of Airis Estrella Rodriguez Pando, the girl whose body was found Sunday. Gonzalez said Thursday that a forensic profile of the killer suggests he had two accomplices and crosses the U.S.-Mexico border frequently.

UNICEF called for “cultural change in society and strict application of the law” to stop the crimes.

Russia

Government minister, bodyguard killed in blast

A bomb exploded in an apartment building in southern Russia’s Dagestan region Friday, killing the area’s minister for ethnic relations and his bodyguard, police said.

Zagir Arukhov, 45, was the second minister for ethnic policy to be killed in two years. His predecessor died in August 2003 when his car was blown up. Dagestan is a volatile mix of dozens of ethnic groups.

Russian media reported 10 people were wounded, including three children playing outside the building.

Arukhov, Dagestan’s minister for ethnic policy, information and external relations, was killed by the blast at the entranceway to his building in the regional capital, Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Musayev said.

He said another man was wounded by the explosion, which had the force of up to a half a pound of TNT.

Several residents were evacuated, some helped through windows by emergency workers.

Investigators from the federal Interior Ministry, including organized crime and terrorism specialists, headed to Makhachkala from Moscow to take part in the probe, Interfax reported. Officials gave no motive and named no suspects.

Bangladesh

Ferry disasters leave 133 dead, 187 missing

Three ferry accidents in Bangladesh in the past week have left at least 133 people dead, officials said Friday as hope faded for 187 people still missing.

Twelve more bodies recovered Friday in the Padma River were all from the M.L. Raipura, a double-deck ferry that went down during a storm Tuesday with about 250 people on board in Manikganj district, 25 miles northwest of the capital, Dhaka.

Another 157 people were unaccounted for, said Abdur Razzak, a police diver. “Decomposing bodies are now surfacing in the river,” he said. “There is very little chance of finding alive those who are still missing.”

Strong currents hampered efforts to recover the ferry, said Lt. Comm. Mahbubur Rashid.

Meanwhile, in southern Bhola district, rescuers searched for about 30 people missing after a trawler with more than 100 aboard sank in a storm Thursday night, said police officer Mozammel Hossain. No bodies had been recovered from that accident.

The wooden fishing boat sank in the mouth of the Meghna River, 65 miles south of Dhaka. At least 70 people swam ashore or were rescued by passing boats, Hossain said.

On Sunday, an overcrowded ferry carrying a wedding party sank in a storm in southern Patuakhali district, killing at least 88 people.

United Nations

U.N. warns against linking dues to reform

The United Nations on Friday warned that a proposed congressional bill linking U.N. reform with tens of millions of dollars in U.S. dues would be “counterproductive.”

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is pushing his own reform package, which would include some of the most sweeping changes in the 60-year history of the United Nations. Officials here worry that the congressional action would interfere with his efforts.

The House International Relations Committee distributed an early version of the “United Nations Reform Act of 2005” on Thursday. The document seeks to cut funding for programs seen as useless and bar human rights violators from serving on U.N. human rights bodies.

The proposed changes would shake the U.N. system at its foundations. The United States pays almost 25 percent of the world body’s annual $1.5 billion general budget.

However, that does not include money for peacekeeping, international tribunals or programs like the U.N. Development Program and UNICEF, which are funded separately.

Jordan

Laura Bush contradicts White House position

Laura Bush is showing her independent side and contradicting the White House.

Newsweek magazine should not be solely blamed for deadly protests in the Middle East, the first lady said Friday. And her husband should have been interrupted to be told about an airplane scare that sent her hurrying for cover in an underground bunker.

Her candid remarks – at the outset of a trip to the Middle East – showed anew her willingness to step out more boldly in her husband’s second term. Usually deferential to her husband and rarely controversial, she has veered off the White House message only rarely in the past.

But there was no mistaking that her views were at odds with White House officials as she chatted with reporters as she flew across the Atlantic.

Researchers discover new species of monkey

Scientists have discovered a new species of African monkey – the first such discovery in 20 years.

The highland mangabey (Lophocebus kipunji) grows to about 3 feet in length, has a 3-foot tail, elongated cheek whiskers, an off-white belly and bushy brown coat suitable for a mountain habitat, where temperatures frequently drop below freezing, scientists say.

Two groups of scientists working 230 miles apart in Tanzania discovered the monkey independently about the same time.

“It really is an amazing coincidence,” said Trevor Jones, a wildlife biologist and co-discoverer who found the animal while surveying a remote rain forest for the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Jones was in Udzungwa Mountains National Park as part of a research team that was counting populations of another type of monkey when he spotted the mangabey in July 2004.

The discovery was reported in Saturday’s issue of Science by Jones and Tim Davenport, who had spotted the monkey several months earlier while surveying the flanks of a 10,000-foot volcano in Tanzania’s southern highlands.

Rice broadens indictment of Syria

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday broadened U.S. accusations that Syria was contributing to violent insurgencies in Iraq.

After a meeting with Iraq’s planning minister, Barham Salih, Rice again accused Syria of supporting terror. To that, she added an allegation that Syria also may be providing financial support for insurgents as well as “allowing its territory to be used to organize terrorist attacks against innocent Iraqis.”

Moreover, Rice said, Syria was supporting Palestinians trying to undercut cooperation with Israel on a projected withdrawal from Gaza.

For months, the State Department has complained that Syria was not guarding its borders to prevent infiltration of fighters into Iraq. “We are concerned in particular about Syrian behavior on its own border,” she said Friday.