In brief: Former Mexican president dies
MEXICO CITY – Former President Miguel de la Madrid, who led Mexico from 1982 to 1988 during an economic crisis and a devastating earthquake, died Sunday at age 77, the government said.
President Felipe Calderon called de la Madrid “a Mexican with a profound commitment to the country” in a statement confirming his death. The cause of death was not revealed, but the former president had been hospitalized in Mexico City with respiratory problems since Dec. 17.
His term was a grim time for most Mexicans, a six-year hangover after a spending binge by a previous government that was convinced soaring oil prices would never fall. When they did, the buying power of Mexican salaries was slashed in half as inflation chewed up paychecks.
De la Madrid pulled Mexico back from economic collapse during his presidency, but he refused to accept the democratic transition Mexicans sought and got more than a decade later.
Suu Kyi elected to parliament
YANGON, Myanmar – The people of Myanmar got their first taste of democracy in two decades Sunday, with unofficial results showing they had elected opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to parliament in a process that ushered in a new era for the long-isolated Southeast Asian nation.
Despite Suu Kyi’s popularity in Myanmar, the apparent victory marks the first time she will hold office. She was under house arrest during general elections in 1990 and the tainted elections of 2010.
Voting was generally peaceful Sunday although there were some allegations of vote-tampering and harassment. The pro-military government hopes that any shortcomings will be seen as minor enough to convince Western nations to drop crippling economic sanctions.
Suu Kyi and her opposition colleagues will have a relatively muted voice in the 664-seat parliament, in which the military and its proxies hold more than 80 percent of the seats.
Panel says tsunami could top 112 feet
TOKYO – Revised estimates of the potential impact from an earthquake off Japan’s southern coast show much of the country’s Pacific shore could be inundated by a tsunami more than 112 feet high.
A government- commissioned panel of experts said a tsunami unleashed by a magnitude-9.0 earthquake in the Nankai trough, which runs east of Japan’s main island of Honshu to the southern island of Kyushu, could top 112 feet.
An earlier forecast in 2003 put the potential maximum height of such a tsunami at less than 66 feet.
The revisions, contained in a report released Saturday and posted on a government website, are based on new research following last March’s magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami, which devastated a long stretch of Japan’s northeastern coast and killed about 19,000 people.