LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Peace will be achieved only through direct talks.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
urging Palestinians to avoid unilateral action and resume peace talks Article, this page Mexican shootout
kills 3 civilians
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - Three bystanders died in the crossfire of a shootout between gunmen, police and soldiers in northern Mexico on Sunday.
The victims were a 14-year-old boy and two women, 18 and 47, according to the prosecutors’ office in northern Coahuila state.
The statement said gunmen traveling in two vehicles in Saltillo, Coahuila, opened fire on a convoy of federal police and soldiers, who returned fire. The state attorney general’s office said it was investigating and expressed condolences to the victims’ families.
Coahuila has been the scene of bloody turf battles between the Sinaloa cartel and the Zetas drug gang.
In the border city of Ciudad Juarez, meanwhile, the death toll from a birthday party massacre late Friday rose to 14 after an 18-year-old man died of his wounds.
Nineteen people were wounded in the attack on two homes where about four dozen partygoers had gathered for a teen’s birthday.
Opposition holds ground in Bahrain
MANAMA, Bahrain - Bahrain’s Shiite-led opposition held on to all of its parliament seats in weekend elections, according to official results announced Sunday, but fell short of the majority it sought as a show of strength against Sunni rulers.
The leaders of the strategic U.S. ally have since August waged a campaign of arrests and intimidation against suspected opponents from the country’s Shiite majority, claiming they seek to undermine the ruling system and could open the door for Shiite powerhouse Iran to exert influence in the heart of the Persian Gulf.
Shiites in Bahrain say they only seek greater rights after being shut out from key decision-making roles in the country.
The main Shiite opposition group, Al Wefaq, kept its 18 seats in the 40-member legislature.
As in the last elections, in 2006, the Shiite group cited irregularities, including at least 890 voters turned away from polling stations in mostly Shiite areas because their names were not on electoral lists.
Earthquake camps brace for cholera
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - A cholera outbreak that already has left 250 people dead and more than 3,000 sickened is at the doorstep of an enormous potential breeding ground: the squalid camps in Port-au-Prince where 1.3 million earthquake survivors live.
Health authorities and aid workers are scrambling to keep the tragedies from merging and the deaths from multiplying.
Five cholera patients have been reported in Haiti’s capital, heightening worries that the disease could reach the sprawling tent slums where abysmal hygiene, poor sanitation and widespread poverty could rapidly spread it.
But government officials said Sunday that all five apparently got cholera outside Port-au-Prince, and they voiced hope that the deadly bacterial disease could be confined to the rural areas where the outbreak originated last week.
Health Ministry director Gabriel Timothee said tightly limiting movement of patients and careful disposal of bodies can stave off a major medical disaster.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 10/25/2010