WORLD briefs

08-13-2009 |

Panama Star PERU. A Peruvian government prosecutor presented homicide charges against two police generals and 15 other officers for a June government crackdown at an Amazon highway blockade manned by Indians protesting development on their ancestral lands. The criminal charges, which must be ratified by a judge, are the first to implicate police in violence that left at least 33 dead, including 23 police. Amnesty International and other human rights groups previously called the Peruvian government's investigation imbalanced because police had not been implicated

FRANCE. A Muslim woman garbed in a head-to-toe swimsuit dubbed a "burquini" was banned at a local pool because of France's pool hygiene standards — not out of hostility to overtly Muslim garb authorities said. The woman, a 35-year-old convert to Islam identified only as Carole, complained of religious discrimination. She tried to file a complaint at a local police station, but her request was turned down as groundless.

TANZANIA. Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo have arrested a former Rwandan mayor for his alleged role in the 1994 genocide, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) said yesterday. Gregoire Ndahimana, the former mayor of the town of Kivumu is alleged to have played a role in the massacre of more than 1,000 Tutsis who took refuge in the Catholic church in the village of Nyange.

MIAMI. A tropical depression in the Atlantic has yet to strengthen but forecasters say it could become a tropical storm in the next few days. Its maximum sustained winds are near 35 mph and it's centered about 535 miles west of the southernmost Cape Verde Islands off Africa's western coast. The depression is moving west near 12 mph.

IRAQ. There have been 67 confirmed cases of swine flu among American troops in Iraq with dozens more suspected, Iraqi officials said Wednesday, making US soldiers the single largest group in the country to come down with the virus. American soldiers account for more than two-thirds of Iraq's 96 swine flu cases, according to figures released by the Iraqi Health Ministry, as it presented steps being taken to control the spread of the virus that last week claimed its first fatality in Iraq.