World Briefs

HAVANA – Cuba is formally rejecting an offer to rejoin the Organization of American States, echoing the sentiments of Fidel Castro who has long maintained his island has no use for the group.

The OAS voted last week to lift a decades-old suspension of Cuba's membership. A statement published Monday in the communist newspaper Granma says the government is satisfied "with this expression of sovereignty and community" but repeats that Cuba "will not return to the OAS."

BEIJING - China is requiring personal computers sold in the country to carry software that blocks online pornography and other Web sites, giving one of the world's most sophisticated censorship regimes and more control over the Internet. The developer said the tool would give parents more oversight

LONDON – British Prime Minister Gordon Brown faced renewed challenges to his grip on power Monday after his ruling Labour Party suffered its worst electoral results in a century and another minister quit his government.

Brown's future appeared to rest on the outcome of a meeting Monday between the leader and several hundred Labour lawmakers from both houses of Parliament to discuss the dire election results.

YALA, Thailand – Gunmen killed 10 people and wounded 12 others when they opened fire with automatic weapons at a mosque during evening prayers in Thailand's restive Muslim south, police said on Monday. A rubber tapper was also shot dead and nine soldiers were wounded by a roadside bomb on Monday, one of the worst days of violence in months in the region bordering Malaysia.

BELFAST – The head of the hardline Real IRA was found liable Monday with three other men for Northern Ireland's 1998 Omagh bombing in a landmark Belfast civil court ruling on a case brought by victims' families.

Twenty-nine people, including Spanish tourists visiting the town, were killed in the bombing, the worst atrocity in three decades of violence which wracked the province.

HERMOSILLO, Mexico – Distraught parents buried their children Monday as the death toll rose to 43 from a fire that raged through a government daycare center in northern Mexico, leaving the country in shock. The governor of the northern state of Sonora said one more child had died in hospital, in an interview on Televisa channel, after Friday's fire at the daycare center in Hermosillo. "Up to now, the toll is 43," said Eduardo Bours, adding that most had died from smoke inhalation.