Mexico: Activist to fight on
TIJUANA — An illegal immigrant who took refuge in a Chicago church for a year to avoid being separated from her American-born son was deported from the United States to Mexico, where she vowed Monday to continue her campaign to change U.S. immigration laws.
Elvira Arellano, 32, became an activist and a national symbol for illegal immigrant parents as she defied her deportation order and spoke out from her sanctuary. She announced last week that she was leaving the Adalberto United Methodist Church to try to lobby U.S. lawmakers.
She had just spoken at a Los Angeles rally when she was arrested Sunday outside Our Lady Queen of Angels church and deported, said the Rev. Walter Coleman, pastor of Adalberto United Methodist.
"They were in a hurry to deport me because they saw that I was threatening to mobilize and organize the people to fight for legalization," Arellano said in Spanish outside a Tijuana apartment where she was staying with a friend. "I have a fighting spirit and I'm going to continue fighting."
Canada: Jet seatbelt blamed
TORONTO — A Canadian Forces pilot who died when his jet crashed while rehearsing for an air show last May lost control of his plane after his seatbelt unfastened as he flew upside down, according to an investigator's report released Monday.
Capt. Shawn McCaughey, 31, fell out of his seat while his Canadair CT-114 Tutor was in a practice formation with three other planes and flying upside down at an altitude of 300 feet over Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, according to the interim report.
The single-engine jet climbed and rolled upright before nosing over at about 750 feet and then hitting the ground at about 45 degrees nose down, according to the interim report.
Gaza Strip: Feud kills power
GAZA CITY — Hundreds of thousands of Gaza residents were forced to make do without electricity Monday as the coastal strip's power supply became the latest victim of feuding between Gaza's Hamas rulers and their Fatah rivals.
European donors stopped paying key electricity aid over the weekend, concerned that Hamas is siphoning off revenues. As Fatah and Hamas traded charges of corruption, at least half of Gaza's 1.4 million people were plunged into darkness.
Peru: Search scaled back
PISCO — Rescuers gave up hope of finding any more survivors and concentrated Monday on clearing tons of rubble from the streets of this southern port city leveled by a powerful earthquake that killed at least 540 people.
The magnitude-8 quake on Wednesday destroyed more than 85 percent of the homes in Pisco, a fishing port 125 miles southeast of Lima that was the hardest hit city.
Rescue workers have removed 148 bodies from a church in the city after its domed ceiling broke apart during the earthquake. It was not clear how many of the 300 congregants inside survived the shaking that lasted for an agonizing two minutes.
Russia: Prisoner released
MOSCOW — A member of an opposition group led by the former chess champion Garry Kasparov was released Monday from a psychiatric clinic after being held against her will for 46 days, a spokeswoman for the group said.
Larisa Arap, 48, a member of Kasparov's group in the port city of Murmansk, was forcibly hospitalized last month in what opposition activists said was revenge for exposing alleged abuse of children in a local psychiatric hospital.