Muslims condemn mocking video

Videos showing anti-immigrant party members mocking the Prophet Muhammad were pulled from Web sites Monday as two youths seen in the clips were reported in hiding and the Foreign Ministry warned Danes against traveling to much of the Middle East.

Muslim clerics from Egypt and Indonesia condemned the video broadcast in Denmark last week showing members of the Danish People’s Party youth wing with cartoons of a camel wearing the head of Muhammad and beer cans for humps. A second drawing placed a turbaned, bearded man next to a plus sign and a bomb, all equaling a mushroom cloud.

Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen condemned the youth in the video Sunday, saying “their tasteless behavior does in no way represent the way the Danish people or young Danish people view Muslims or Islam.”

PARIS

Mexico may take fence plan to U.N.

Mexico’s foreign secretary said Monday the country may take a dispute over U.S. plans to build a fence on the Mexican border to the United Nations.

Luis Ernesto Derbez told reporters in Paris, his first stop on a European tour, that a legal investigation was under way to determine whether Mexico has a case.

The Mexican government last week sent a diplomatic note to Washington criticizing the plan for 700 miles of new fencing along the border. President-elect Felipe Calderon also denounced the plan, but said it was a bilateral issue that should not be put before the international community.

Derbez said Monday after meeting with French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy that it was a “shame” U.S. immigration policy had been used for what he claimed was a short-term political gain in the lead-up to midterm elections in the U.S. in November.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina

School bus crash leaves 12 dead

A bus carrying high school students home from a charity event in an impoverished community in northern Argentina collided head-on with a truck, killing at least 12 people, officials said Monday.

The bus was carrying some 50 people when it slammed into a truck Sunday on a rural highway some 420 miles north of Buenos Aires, Argentina’s capital, officials said.

The dead included nine students aged 17 and 18, the drivers of both vehicles and a passenger in the truck. Forty-one others suffered injuries. The city’s mayor declared three days of mourning.

“We are just destroyed by this news,” said Buenos Aires Mayor Jorge Telerman, who met tearful classmates and victims’ relatives.

Charity drives are commonplace among Argentine high school students, who travel from the capital to impoverished communities to repair and repaint rural schools and restock supplies.

Compiled from wire reports