In brief: Five killed when driver runs red light

RIVIERA BEACH, Fla. – Five people, including three teenagers, were killed Saturday in Florida after their car was hit by another vehicle that jolted through an interstate exit ramp, authorities said.

The driver of a 2008 Mercedes is believed to have been speeding as he exited Interstate 95 and ran a red light in Riviera Beach, about five miles north of West Palm Beach, shortly after midnight, Florida Highway Patrol Lt. Tim Frith said.

Twenty-one-year-old Jabari Kemp’s vehicle slammed into a 1994 Lexus carrying five people, the youngest 14 and the oldest 22. The impact ejected four people from the car. Only one passenger was wearing a seatbelt, Frith said.

Four of the people in the Lexus were pronounced dead at the scene. A fifth died after being taken to a nearby hospital.

Kemp was taken to St. Mary’s Hospital in serious but not life-threatening condition.

Frith said Kemp was traveling at “a high rate of speed” as he exited the ramp and hit the Lexus. Debris from the crash struck a third vehicle, but the driver was not injured.

Activists say Syrian airstrike kills 12

BEIRUT – Activists say a Syrian government airstrike on a town in the country’s northwest has killed at least 12 civilians.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights activist group says the air raid struck the town of Saraqeb in Idlib province Saturday.

The Observatory says four of the dead were members of the same family.

The regime’s air power is its biggest advantage in the civil war, and it has used its warplanes to try to check rebel advances. Government air raids also frequently hit civilian areas.

Earlier this week, Human Rights Watch accused President Bashar Assad’s government of committing war crimes by indiscriminate and sometimes deliberate airstrikes against civilians, killing at least 4,300 people since the summer.

Judge steps aside in Mubarak retrial

CAIRO – The judge in Hosni Mubarak’s retrial recused himself at the start of the first session on Saturday, citing a conflict of interest as the former Egyptian president appeared in court for the first time in 10 months, grinning and waving to supporters.

The recusal threw the case deeper into disarray after an appeals court in January overturned a life sentence for Mubarak on a conviction for failing to prevent the killings of protesters during the 2011 uprising that ousted him.

The appeals court granted Mubarak a retrial after ruling that in the first trial, the prosecution’s case lacked concrete evidence and failed to prove that protesters were killed by the police during the bloodiest days of the revolt. Some 900 people were killed in the 18-day uprising, most of them in the initial days.