Canada: Refugees healthy
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Hundreds of Tamil asylum-seekers from war-ravaged Sri Lanka spent a grueling three months at sea in a cramped, ramshackle cargo ship but arrived in fairly good condition, Canadian officials said Saturday.
The ship, carrying at least 450 refugees, was modified in order to maximize profits for a human smuggling operation likely organized by the Tamil Tigers, Canada's top security official, Vic Toews, said. Canadian officials said some refugees were nauseous and dehydrated but were mostly in good spirits.
Chile: Trapped miners
SANTIAGO — Chile's mining minister says rescuers hope that probes they are drilling will reach 33 trapped miners by Monday.
Minister Laurence Golborne says the most advanced probe is 1,715 feet deep as of Saturday. It's aimed at an emergency refuge 2,297 feet below the surface. The workers have been trapped by an Aug. 5 collapse at the San Jose gold and silver mine in northern Chile. Rescuers have had no contact with them.
England: Bomb injures 3
LONDON — Three children suffered minor injuries in a bomb attack seemingly timed to attack police and emergency services in Northern Ireland, officers and a lawmaker said Saturday.
Police said a device exploded close to a school in Lurgan, Co. Armagh, about 22 miles west of Belfast, injuring two 12-year-olds and a two-year old who were struck by flying debris. At the time of the blast, police had been evacuating homes in the area following reports of a separate device.
India: Unrest in Kashmir
SRINAGAR — Two people were shot dead by security forces Saturday as deaths continued to mount during weeks of defiant protests against India's rule over the predominantly Muslim region of Kashmir.
Unrest that has killed at least 57 people since June shows no signs of abating despite the deployment of thousands of troops and calls from India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for calm. Tens of thousands of Kashmiris staged angry demonstrations Friday after government forces killed four people and wounded 31 others.
Italy: $1B from Mafia
ROME — Police in Sicily say they've hit at the heart of the financial empire of a convicted Mafia associate, seizing more than $1 billion in property and businesses, including a clinic for cancer patients and a local soccer team.
The businesses included eight construction companies. Local health mogul Michele Aiello, 53, was convicted of Mafia association, corruption and fraud and sentenced to 15 1/2 years in prison.
Pakistan: Missiles kill 12
MIR ALI — Intelligence officials say suspected U.S. missiles have killed 12 people in a Pakistan tribal region along the Afghan border. Saturday's missile strike in Issori village in North Waziristan was the first such attack since intense floods hit Pakistan in late July.
Paraguay: Lugo recovers
ASUNCION — Paraguay's president says he feels renewed by his first session of cancer treatments and that he is ready to serve out his term, which ends in 2013.
President Fernando Lugo was released from a Brazilian hospital on Saturday, two days after a session of chemotherapy. Doctors recently determined that Lugo has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Five more treatments are scheduled.
Venezuela: Picture probe
CARACAS — Prosecutors in Venezuela say they are investigating a newspaper's publication of a photograph on its front page depicting bodies in a Caracas morgue.
The photograph in the newspaper El Nacional showed about a dozen bodies of men strewn about on examination tables in the morgue. El Nacional's editor, Miguel Henrique Otero, said the photograph — taken in December — was used in Friday's newspaper to illustrate the fact that the morgue is being overwhelmed due to rampant violence.