World in brief: Police won’t face charges in killing
Police officers who shot and killed an innocent Brazilian they mistook for a suicide bomber will not face criminal charges, prosecutors said Monday in a decision a relative called “unbelievable.”
Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, was killed by police on a London subway train last July 22 – two weeks after four suicide bombers killed themselves and 52 commuters on three subway trains and a bus, and a day after a failed set of attacks.
Police at the time apologized for the killing and said they had mistaken de Menezes for one of the suspects in the failed attacks.
Stephen O’Doherty of the Crown Prosecution Service’s Special Crime Division said there was no realistic prospect of convicting any officer of a crime.
SANTIAGO, Chile
High court rules against Pinochet
Chile’s Supreme Court has upheld a ruling that stripped Gen. Augusto Pinochet of his immunity against trial for the killing of two bodyguards of Salvador Allende, the Marxist president he toppled in a 1973 coup.
The ruling announced Monday affirms a lower court decision to remove the immunity the ailing Pinochet enjoys as a former president and allows the judge handling the case, Victor Montiglio, to try him on homicide charges. Montiglio did not immediately state his plans.
The two bodyguards – Wagner Salinas and Francisco Lara – were arrested the day of the coup, Sept. 11, 1973, and executed by a firing squad four weeks later, the military regime announced at the time.
Their deaths were part of the so-called Caravan of Death, a military operation that killed 75 jailed dissidents across Chile in the weeks after the coup.
BEIJING
Storm’s death toll climbs to 188
China’s death toll from tropical storm Bilis has jumped to 188 after torrential rains swept away houses and triggered devastating mudslides, the government’s main news agency said today.
More heavy rains were forecast in Guangdong province, a major economic center that borders Hong Kong, after Bilis flooded farmland, washed out roads and railway lines and cut power supplies, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The rains swelled reservoirs, causing them to overflow and sweep away thousands of homes and destroy crops. Train lines were inundated and mines were flooded with torrents of water.
MEXICO CITY
Calderon acting like winner
The presumed top vote-getter in Mexico’s presidential election said Monday he has begun working on his new government, even though the country’s electoral court has yet to declare a winner in the disputed race.
Conservative Felipe Calderon, of President Vicente Fox’s ruling National Action Party, led official returns from the July 2 election by about 244,000 votes – just 0.6 percentage points. However, under Mexican law he cannot be declared president-elect until an electoral court deals with challenges to the vote.
The party of the runner-up, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has filed an 836-page appeal alleging ballot stuffing, illicit government and corporate intervention, and other irregularities.
Calderon said Monday the country can’t sit dormant pending a decision from the court, which must rule on the election by Aug. 31 and declare a president-elect by Sept. 6.