Mexico: 'Lady Killer' sentenced
MEXICO CITY — A former female wrestler who terrorized Mexico City as the "Little Old Lady Killer" was sentenced to 759 years in jail on Monday for killing 16 elderly women.
Juana Barraza, 50, admitted to killing four women over the age of 70 out of anger toward her mother.
She said she did not kill the others and did not agree with the sentence, but prosecutors say her fingerprints matched those in the 12 other cases.
The series of murders created a wave of fear among elderly women in Mexico City and lurid speculation in the press. The killer's robust physique originally led police to round up scores of transvestites for questioning, angering gay rights activists.
Barraza was captured in 2006 leaving the house of Ana Maria Reyes, 82, who had been strangled with a stethoscope.
As a professional wrestler in earlier years, she was known by her stage name as "The Silent Lady."
China: Suspects arrested
BEIJING — Suspects accused of setting fire to shops in Tibet, causing the deaths of 12 people during anti-government violence, have been taken into custody, state media said Monday.
The suspects were responsible for deadly arson attacks on three shops in Lhasa — including a clothing outlet where five young women were burned to death — and one in nearby Dagze county, the Tibet Daily said.
The government has highlighted the burning deaths as a way to show that Tibetans were responsible for the violence that mainly targeted Han Chinese.
Greece: Director Dassin dies
ATHENS — American director Jules Dassin, whose Greek wife Melina Mercouri starred in his hit movie "Never on Sunday" and six more of his films, died late Monday at an Athens hospital, officials said. He was 96.
The cause of death was not made public. A spokeswoman for Hygeia hospital said only that he had been treated there the past two weeks.
Dassin, a leftist activist whose more than 20 films included "Topkapi," left Hollywood in 1950 during the Communist blacklisting era.
Five years later, he won wide acclaim for "Rififi," famous for its long heist sequence free of dialogue.
Iraq: Mahdi Army backs off
BAGHDAD — Militiamen with the Mahdi Army, the followers of the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, mostly vanished from the streets of Basra on Monday, a day after he ordered them to lay down their arms and also insisted that the Iraqi government grant a general amnesty for his followers and made other demands.
Iraqi army and police forces immediately moved into Basra neighborhoods abandoned by the Mahdi Army, which is the armed wing of al-Sadr's political movement, setting up checkpoints and searching for roadside bombs. As helicopters continued buzzing overhead, shops began to reopen, and residents ventured out into the streets. The southern Iraqi city had been a battleground since Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered federal forces to begin an assault on the city a week ago.
Jordan: Rice is optimistic
AMMAN — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday that Mideast peace talks are "moving in the right direction," although U.S. officials conceded it would be a hard slog to meet the goal of an Israeli-Palestinian deal in 2008.
Speaking after two days of talks in the region during which she wrung hard-fought but limited concessions from Israel to ease the economic isolation of Palestinians in the West Bank, Rice said more needed to be done, and singled out a halt to Israeli settlement as key.