Peru
Dozens injured, killed in protests
Police officers among dead in battle over natural resources
LIMA — The death toll from a bloody clash between police and indigenous protesters over the rights to natural resources rose to at least 31 Saturday.
Officials said 22 police officers and nine protesters were killed Friday as security forces tried to clear a highway in northeastern Peru that demonstrators had blocked off and on for weeks. More than 150 people were wounded.
Among the people killed were nine of the 38 police officers reportedly taken hostage at the pumping station operated by state-owned PetroPeru. Most of the other hostages escaped, the government said.
But as the government issued an arrest warrant for Alberto Pizango, an Indian leader it blamed for the violence, activists insisted that many more protesters died than listed in the official toll.
Officials declared a 60-day state of emergency in three eastern provinces and a 3 p.m.-to-dawn curfew in Bagua, the epicenter of the violence.
Interior Minister Mercedes Cabanillas said 73 people had been arrested and that Sunday would be a day of national mourning for the victims.
The violence ended weeks of peaceful protest by indigenous communities that claim the Amazon as ancestral lands. They demand that President Alan Garcia rescind mining, petroleum and timber exploitation rights given to companies.
— Adriana Leon and Chris Kraul, Tribune Newspapers
China
Landslide kills at least 26
Chinese rescuers make their way to a buried township after a landslide in Wulong county in southwest China. The landslide buried an iron ore plant and several homes, killing at least 26 people, state television said Saturday. A municipal official said 74 people were missing, including 47 miners, 21 residents and two telecom workers. More than 500 rescuers were searching for survivors, the official Xinhua news agency said. In a separate incident, the body of an American mountain climber was found after an avalanche in Sichuan province, Xinhua said. Rescuers were searching for two other Americans.
Cuba
Castro questions arrests
HAVANA — Fidel Castro called the case of two Americans accused of spying for Cuba “strange” Saturday and questioned whether the timing of their arrests was politically motivated.
In an essay read by a newscaster on state television, the former Cuban leader noted that the retired Washington couple were taken into custody just 24 hours after the Organization of American States voted to lift a decades-old suspension of Cuba’s membership in that group.
An indictment unsealed Friday said Walter Kendall Myers secretly partnered with his wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, as clandestine agents so valued by the Cuban government that they once had a private four-hour meeting with Castro.
Pakistan
Police attacked in capital
ISLAMABAD — A recent surge in suicide attacks reached the capital Saturday when a man wearing an explosives-laden jacket attacked a police compound but was shot down before he could enter the main building. Two officers died and six other were wounded, police said.
The assault fit with a Taliban threat made 10 days earlier that militants would launch strikes in major cities across Pakistan in retaliation for the military’s month-old offensive to oust the Taliban from the Swat Valley in the country’s northwest.
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No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which occurred in the early evening at a police emergency response center in a residential neighborhood of Islamabad.
Waquar Shah, an officer at the center, said a man wearing a heavy jacket was spotted as he jumped over a wall at the center into a courtyard.
California
Carradines seek FBI help
LOS ANGELES — The family of David Carradine is asking the FBI and a private forensics expert to help investigate the “Kung Fu” actor’s death, attorney Mark Geragos said Saturday, the same day Thai police said surveillance footage indicated no one had entered his hotel room before he died.
Carradine’s brother Keith met Friday with the FBI and filed reports that could lead to the agency opening its own inquiry, said Geragos, who represents Keith Carradine. The family will also seek a private autopsy by famed forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden to determine whether another person could have been involved, Geragos said.
The actor’s family hopes the body will arrive in Los Angeles by Monday, Geragos said.
Geragos said the family intervened because of conflicting information about Carradine’s death and a lack of information from Thai authorities.
Texas
Hudson pilot honored
DENISON — In a town that’s no stranger to heroes, one stood out Saturday.
US Airways Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger III returned to his hometown of Denison to help pay tribute to military veterans on the 65th anniversary of the Normandy invasion. Denison also was the hometown of the man who led the invasion, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower.
Gov. Rick Perry presented Sullenberger with a legislative resolution praising his safe landing of a US Airways jet on the Hudson River on Jan. 15, saving all aboard.
The 57-year-old pilot and Air Force veteran took part in a parade.