U.K. health worker held in babies' deaths
LONDON -- British police on Tuesday arrested a female health care worker accused of murdering eight babies and trying to kill six others at a hospital neonatal unit in northwestern England.
Detectives began investigating the deaths of babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester more than a year ago, after the hospital reported a higher than expected mortality rate, which it could not explain, on the unit that cares for premature babies and infants needing special care.
The hospital asked police to "rule out unnatural causes of death."
The investigation initially focused on the deaths of eight babies. Police said Tuesday that the force is now investigating the deaths of 17 babies and 15 "non-fatal collapses" at the unit between March 2015 and July 2016.
Cheshire Constabulary said officers arrested a female "health care professional" Tuesday morning on suspicion of murder and attempted murder. The force did not identify the woman nor give details of her job.
After the spike in deaths the hospital stopped delivering babies before 32 weeks of pregnancy, transferring the expectant mothers to other hospitals.
U.N. council says Syria dodging questions
UNITED NATIONS -- Members of the U.N. Security Council said Syria is still failing to answer questions about its chemical weapons program, years after becoming a party to the chemical weapons convention.
Sweden's U.N. Ambassador Olof Skoog said many council members raised the issue during Tuesday's private meeting on Syria's chemical weapons where U.N. disarmament chief Izumi Nakamitsu gave a briefing by video.
Skoog said "there are a lot of uncertainties" in Syria's declaration to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons of its chemical weapons program, "and that is part of the problem."
Gunmen kill Mexican town's mayor
MEXICO CITY -- Gunmen have killed the mayor of a town in western Mexico where three Italian men disappeared in late January.
The prosecutors' office in Jalisco state said the mayor of Tecalitlan was gunned down by assailants wielding rifles.
A Tecalitlan municipal worker was wounded in the attack Monday.
The missing Italians are Raffaele Russo, his 25-year-old son Antonio Russo and his 29-year-old nephew Vincenzo Cimmino, all from the Naples area.
Several municipal police officers were arrested in February in their disappearance. Authorities said the agents apparently handed the men over to a criminal gang and they have not been heard from since.
More than 60 mayors or mayors-elect have been killed in Mexico since 2006, often by criminal gangs.
Second Philippine mayor in 2 days killed
MANILA, Philippines -- Another Philippine mayor was shot and killed Tuesday by an unidentified man in a road attack a day after a city mayor was gunned down in brazen back-to-back killings that prompted an opposition senator to call the country the "murder capital of Asia."
Mayor Ferdinand Bote of northern General Tinio town was leaving a government compound in an SUV in northern Nueva Ecija province when a motorcycle-riding man shot him with a pistol. The gunman escaped, police said.
On Monday, Mayor Antonio Halili was shot in the heart and killed while singing the national anthem with hundreds of employees in a flag-raising ceremony in his city of Tanauan, south of Manila. Videos taken by witnesses of the moment when an apparent single rifle shot felled the 72-year-old mayor and sparked chaos have gone viral online and sparked new alarm.
Opposition Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV blamed the killings on a "culture of violence" under President Rodrigo Duterte, whom he has criticized for a brutal anti-drug crackdown that has left thousands of mostly poor suspects dead in the past two years.
Duterte said without elaborating Monday that Halili's killing may have been linked to illegal drugs. At least three mayors accused by his administration of involvement in the drug trade had been killed in raids by or clashes with the police.
Bote, 57, was not on any list of drug suspects, according to the government's main anti-drug agency.
A Section on 07/04/2018