Around the world
VIOLENCE: Fresh violence in the troubled province of Kashmir claimed 11 lives, including a police official who was killed in a gunbattle between India troops and Muslim separatists, officials in New Delhi said Monday. The suspected militants fired at a police station late Sunday night, killing inspector Mohammad Yassen of the local police force, an official spokesman said. Elsewhere in the disputed state, continued violence claimed 10 lives, officials said.TACTIC? Israel's U.N. ambassador, Gad Yaacobi, said Monday Iraq had made indirect peace overtures to the Jewish state, but he called this a tactic to get the West to ease sanctions on Baghdad. "We know Iraq conveys messages indirectly to us and to the state of Israel in other ways that it is not an enemy of Israel . . . ," Yaacobi told Israel Radio. "We also know it's a tactic for obtaining easing of sanctions imposed on Iraq by the Security Council," he said.
TRADE: Japanese and U.S. government officials will meet in London on Tuesday for trade talks, officials of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry said Monday. Meanwhile Japanese apple growers were expressing fears that the first shipment of U.S. apples to Japan, following the lifting of an import ban, would depress local prices.
Across the nation
SLAYING: His congregants say the Rev. Samual Nathaniel Booth would give the last dollar in his wallet to a person in need and was always feeding people who couldn't get a meal elsewhere. On Sunday, one of the people that Booth had helped was charged with murdering him. Police in Essex, Md., said James Thomas Wood confessed to robbing Booth and stabbing him to death Christmas Eve.
MURDER CHARGE: A man charged with murder told police in Gary, Ind., he shot his wife because she went on a rampage after he said he couldn't afford to buy her a Christmas gift. Leon Barnes, 48, was charged Saturday night and jailed without bond. Barnes told police the dispute started when his wife, Ailean Tanner-Barnes, asked him what he was going to buy her for Christmas. He told her that he could not afford a gift. His wife then smashed his computer, printer and fax machine with a table leg and turned toward him, Barnes told investigators.