Canada: Suspect an immigrant
WINNIPEG, Manitoba — A man who witnesses said stabbed, beheaded and cannibalized a fellow traveler on a Greyhound bus immigrated to Canada from China four years ago and worked for a time as a church custodian, the pastor who employed him said.
Grant Memorial Church Pastor Tom Castor, who helped hire Vince Weiguang Li soon after he immigrated in 2004, said the man never showed any sign of anger or emotional problems.
Honduras: Official's kin killed
TEGUCIGALPA — Hundreds of Honduran squatters angry over a long-standing land dispute attacked the home of a local police official, killing 10 members of his family, authorities said Monday.
Armed with machetes and guns, the mob swarmed the home of Henry Sorto on Sunday in Silin, a remote outpost near the border with Guatemala, Security Ministry spokesman Hector Ivan Mejia said. They then set the home on fire, burning to death seven people.
Three bodies were also found hacked and shot to death along a nearby road.
Israel: Refuge sought
JERUSALEM — Scores of Fatah allies who fled to Israel from the Gaza Strip sought refuge in the West Bank on Monday after Israel decided they would face "immediate danger" from Gaza's Hamas rulers if they were returned home.
The men are members of a Fatah-linked Gaza family who fled into Israel over the weekend during the bloodiest internal Palestinian fighting since Hamas seized control of Gaza in June 2007.
Scotland: Gorillas counted
EDINBURGH — More than 125,000 western lowland gorillas have been discovered deep in the forests of the Republic of Congo, dramatically increasing the estimated population, primatologists said Tuesday.
For centuries the reclusive and endangered gorillas remained largely unrecorded, but a new census by the Wildlife Conservation Society, based at the Bronx Zoo in New York City, and the Republic of Congo counted the newly discovered populations in two areas of the northern part of the country covering 18,000 square miles.
Previous estimates put the number of western lowland gorillas at less than 100,000.
Turkey: Baby deaths probed
ANKARA — Turkey's Health Ministry launched an investigation Monday into the deaths of more than 2 dozen newborn babies at a hospital in Ankara.
The Zekai Tahir Burak hospital has acknowledged that 27 babies died there in the past two weeks but said most had died from complications related to premature delivery.
Most of the 26,000 babies born each year or admitted to Zekai Tahir Burak are premature, as the hospital handles high-risk births. The hospital could not immediately say how many babies were delivered in the two-week period involving the 27 deaths.
Russia: Putin courts Cuba
MOSCOW — Russian news reports say Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is calling for Russia to restore its influential relationship with former Cold War ally Cuba.
The statement comes amid persistent speculation about whether Russia could seek a military presence in Cuba — which lies just 90 miles from the U.S. — in response to U.S. plans to place a missile-defense system in Eastern Europe.