World in brief: Iran releases British sailors

Tehran, Iran – Iran has released five British sailors detained after their racing yacht was stopped in the Persian Gulf last week for entering Iranian waters.

The official IRNA news agency said the yachtsmen were let go after an interrogation by Iranian authorities found that their entry into Iranian waters had been a mistake.

The report said the British were released early today.

Iran had warned on Tuesday the sailors would be prosecuted if it was proven they had “bad intentions” when their 60-foot racing yacht entered Iranian waters.

Britain said it was an innocent case of a vessel accidentally going astray in the Persian Gulf.

Zelaya urges election rejection

Tegucigalpa, Honduras – Deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya sent a letter to divided Latin American leaders Tuesday urging them to reject elections held under the coup-installed government and help restore him to power.

“I ask you not to recognize the electoral fraud and for your cooperation so that this coup d’etat does not remain unpunished,” the leftist leader said in a letter released from the Brazilian Embassy, where he is holed up under threat of arrest.

Protected witness in drug case killed

Mexico City – Gunmen burst in to a Starbucks coffee shop Tuesday and killed a former policeman who was a protected witness in a drug corruption case, the second death of a high-profile witness in Mexico in less than two weeks.

Edgar Bayardo was gunned down in the upper middle-class Del Valle neighborhood of the capital, and a man with him was severely wounded, city prosecutor Jaime Slomianski Aguilar said. Another customer who apparently had nothing to do with Bayardo also was wounded.

Shell casings – numbered by police at up to 23 – lay on the shop floor between the door and the counter. The killing bore all the hallmarks of an organized crime execution.