U.S. says it won’t block climate pact
American delegates at the U.N. climate conference insisted Monday they would not be a “roadblock” to a new international agreement aimed at reducing potentially catastrophic greenhouse gases.
But Washington refused to endorse mandatory emissions cuts, which are seen by many governmental delegations at the meeting as crucial for reining in rising temperatures.
Delegates from nearly 190 nations opened the two-week conference with pleas for a new climate pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which will expire in 2012. That deal required the 36 signatories to cut emissions by 5 percent.
A key goal of the conference will be to draw in a skeptical United States, now the sole industrial power that has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, citing fears it would hurt the U.S. economy because cuts aren’t required of rising economies like those in China and India.
MEXICO CITY
2 musicians slain over weekend
The tortured body of the lead singer of a popular Mexican band was found along a highway Monday and another singer was shot to death, police said, the latest Mexican musicians killed in a wave of violence over the past year.
Sergio Gomez, a singer with K-Paz de la Sierra, went missing Sunday after a concert in the Michoacan state capital of Morelia, according to the state attorney general’s office.
Gomez allegedly got into a car with three other people after the concert and headed for Puerto Vallarta, said Magdalena Guzman, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office. His body was found Monday, showing signs of choking and severe bruising on the thorax and abdomen as well as burns on the legs.
A lesser-known singer, Zayda Pena, 28, was shot in the heart Saturday in the city of Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas, while recovering from a gunshot wound received Friday, police detective Abel Infante said Monday.
LONDON
Missing 5 years, man turns up
The last trace of John Darwin was the wreckage of his canoe, which washed up on a beach near his northern England home more than five years ago.
On Saturday, the father of two walked into a London police station and told officers he did not remember where he has been.
Police in Cleveland, northeast England, said Monday that Darwin gave his name, birth date and previous address but no information on his whereabouts over the past five years. The 57-year-old formerly lived in Seaton Carew, 250 miles north of London.
“He can’t be suffering from total amnesia,” a Cleveland police spokeswoman said on condition of anonymity because of force policy. “He says he can’t recollect where he’s been, but that’s something we’re investigating.”