China reports scores die in riot
BEIJING – Chinese state media said that 140 people have been killed and more than 800 hurt in violence in the country’s western Xinjiang region.
The official Xinhua News Agency did not immediately give any other details today on the number of deaths, but said the death toll “was still climbing.” It earlier reported that four people had been killed in violence after protesters from a Muslim ethnic group rioted Sunday in the region’s capital Urumqi, overturning barricades, attacking bystanders and clashing with police.
The protesters were demanding an investigation into a fight between Uighurs and Han Chinese workers at a southern China factory last month that state media said left two people dead.
PRI leading Mexico elections
MEXICO CITY – The party that ruled Mexico for seven decades appeared to be making a historic comeback in Sunday’s midterm congressional elections, scoring big with voters for the first time since it lost the presidency in 2000.
Early returns with about a fifth of the ballots counted showed the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, winning about 35 percent of votes for the lower house of Congress, against about 27 percent for President Felipe Calderon’s conservative National Action Party, PAN.
PAN national leader German Martinez acknowledged the PRI’s gains but said they came at the expense of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, Calderon’s archrival, as that party splintered and declined.
Drug violence and the economic downturn weighed heavily in Sunday’s elections, seen by many as a referendum that could decide the future of Calderon’s anti-crime and economic policies.
Former D.C. mayor accused of stalking
WASHINGTON – Police said former Washington Mayor Marion Barry has been arrested and charged with stalking a woman.
The United States Park Police said Barry, a current D.C. Council member, was arrested Saturday in Washington after a woman flagged down an officer and complained Barry, 73, was stalking her. Barry was charged with misdemeanor stalking and released.
Barry’s spokeswoman, Natalie Williams, said Sunday that the accusation was “baseless.”
She said Barry plans to fight the charge and said the accuser is a 40-year-old woman Barry had helped financially.
Spy chief’s family details on Web
LONDON – Photos and family details about the newly appointed head of Britain’s international spy agency have been removed from a social networking Web site.
The Mail on Sunday newspaper reports that the information was posted by the wife of John Sawers on her Facebook page.
Some opposition politicians said the revelations are a security breach, while others say they are just embarrassing.
Pictures from the site published in the newspaper show Sawers playing Frisbee on a beach in his swim trunks and wearing a Santa hat.
Sawers was named last month as the new head of the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6. He is currently Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations. Until the 1990s, the identity of the M16 chief, known as C, was kept secret.