Mexico reports first hurricane fatality

Mexico City Mexican authorities on Friday reported the first death from Hurricane Emily, which destroyed thousands of buildings and drove 90,000 people from their homes as it tore through northern Mexico this week.

The report of a woman swept away by floodwaters in the northern city of San Pedro Garza Garcia came just as President Vicente Fox toured the devastation caused by the hurricane.

Officials said the evacuation of tens of thousands of people in the Yucatan area and along Mexico’s northern Gulf coast helped avoid more extensive tragedies.

“You see what preparation and foresight are: No lives were lost, which is the most important thing,” Fox said before word of the drowning arrived.

Before Emily dissipated Thursday, the storm hit both the Yucatan and northern Mexico with winds of more than 125 mph.

Koreans, Chinese sue Japan over textbook

Tokyo A group of Koreans and Chinese filed a lawsuit Friday seeking to force a state government to ban new textbooks they say gloss over Japan’s militaristic past, a Japanese news agency reported.

The 577 plaintiffs also demanded $9 each for alleged psychological suffering caused by the publication of textbooks that glorify Japan’s aggression in Asia in the 1930s and 1940s, Kyodo News agency said.

Japan’s Education Ministry approved new editions of the history and civics textbooks in April, drawing furious protests from China and South Korea.

Critics say the books downplay Japanese military atrocities – such as using Asian women as sexual slaves for troops in Asia and massacring civilians in Nanking, China – in the 1930s and 40s. The new textbooks do not mention sexual slavery and relegate the Nanking killings to a footnote.

Japan also colonized the Korean Peninsula in 1910-45.

Many of Japan’s 580 school districts are currently choosing which textbooks to use for the 2006 school year. It was not immediately clear how many would adopt the two controversial books, which were prepared by nationalist scholars.

Ultralight crashes near German parliament

Berlin An ultralight airplane crashed close to the German parliament and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s office late Friday, killing the pilot but harming no one on the ground, police said. A city official ruled out a terrorist attack.

The pilot died when his plane plunged onto a lawn in front of the Reichstag, which houses the lower house of parliament, in downtown Berlin shortly before 8:30 p.m. local time, police spokesman Hansjoerg Draeger said.

No one else was injured when plane came down in the wide lawn and no buildings were damaged.

The burned wreckage lay about 650 feet from the parliament and about 330 feet from Schroeder’s office. It was not immediately clear if Schroeder was in his office.

“Nothing, absolutely nothing indicates a terror background,” Eckhardt Koerting, Berlin’s top law enforcement, told reporters.

German air control officials said the plane had not appeared on their frequency and suspected the crash was a suicide attempt.