In brief: Preval staying for 3 months

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Haitian President Rene Preval will stay in office for three more months as his country chooses a successor in a delayed election, his chief of staff said Monday.

Chief of staff Fritz Longchamp confirmed Preval’s exit date of May 14 in a phone interview with the Associated Press.

Preval’s term had been scheduled to end Monday, but his successor will not be elected until Haiti holds a presidential runoff March 20. An emergency law passed by members of Preval’s former party in an expiring Senate allows him to remain in office for up to three more months because his 2006 inauguration was delayed.

Three teens killed in Mexico

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – Three teenage boys were shot to death in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, at least two of them U.S. citizens and high school students in Texas, authorities said Monday.

The boys were killed at 4:22 p.m. Saturday while looking at cars in a dealership in the city across the border from El Paso, Texas, Chihuahua prosecutors spokesman Arturo Sandoval said.

There were no leads on suspects or a motive, Sandoval said.

Meeting held in DMZ

SEOUL, South Korea – Military officers from North and South Korea talked inside the heavily guarded Demilitarized Zone on Tuesday in the rivals’ first official dialogue since the North’s deadly artillery barrage of a South Korean island in November.

Tensions on the divided peninsula rose sharply after the attack, which killed four people eight months after the sinking of a South Korean warship killed 46 sailors. The South has blamed a North Korean torpedo attack, but Pyongyang has denied involvement in the sinking.

Colonel-level officers of the two Koreas met Tuesday at the border village of Panmunjom to set a date and work out other details for higher-level defense talks aimed at discussing the two attacks last year, according to South Korea’s Defense Ministry.

Accused general dies

MANILA, Philippines – A former military chief accused of embezzling at least $1 million from the armed forces died of a gunshot wound Tuesday in what witnesses described as an apparent suicide at his mother’s grave.

Retired Gen. Angelo Reyes, 65, was pronounced dead on arrival at a Manila hospital from a single gunshot wound in the chest after visiting the grave, Health Secretary Enrique Ona said.

Reyes headed the military from 2001 to 2003 and was recently accused in a high-profile congressional hearing of pocketing money from the armed forces.

Probe into attack ordered

JAKARTA, Indonesia – Indonesia’s president ordered an investigation into an attack on members of a minority Muslim sect after a gruesome video emerged of a mob beating several victims to death with machetes, sticks and rocks.

About 1,500 people stormed a house in Banten province over the weekend to stop 20 Ahmadiyah followers from worshipping. They killed three men and badly wounded six others, while destroying the house and setting fire to several cars and motorbikes.

Indonesia is a secular country of 237 million people with more Muslims than any other in the world.