In brief: Suicide bombers strike in Pakistan

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – A suicide bomber struck a neighborhood home to government buildings and a church in Pakistan’s main northwest city Thursday, killing five people.

The attack was the second in three days in Peshawar, and the latest in a wave of violence that has killed more than 500 people in Pakistan since October. The bomber walked up to a checkpoint along the road and detonated his explosives when a police officer asked him to stop, city police chief Liaquat Ali told the Associated Press. More than a dozen were wounded in the attack.

Also Thursday, a suicide bomber targeting a procession of Shiites detonated his explosives at the gate of a shrine on the outskirts of Islamabad, said police chief Kalim Imam. Men were making their way to the shrine, with women already inside, as the bomber approached. He set off his vest when police challenged him, Imam said. Police official Sajjad Hussein said a 4-year-old girl was killed. One policeman was also wounded.

Former president Caldera, 93, dies

CARACAS, Venezuela – Rafael Antonio Caldera, a two-time president who helped establish democracy in Venezuela and issued the pardon that allowed Hugo Chavez to rise to power, died Thursday in Caracas, his son said. He was 93.

Andres Caldera, in comments to Venezuelan television, did not give the cause of his father’s death, but the former president who governed Venezuela from 1969-1974 and 1994-1999 had suffered from Parkinson’s disease for several years.

Although 20 years divided his terms, Caldera’s manner of ruling was the same: Reserved, tough with political adversaries and inclined toward populism. He was also known for living simply and eschewing luxuries, and for integrity in a country where corruption is common.

In 1994, Caldera pardoned Chavez, who had been jailed for leading a failed military coup two years earlier. But Caldera was later deeply at odds with Venezuela’s current president.

Bus crash into ravine kills 42

LIMA, Peru – A bus carrying mostly Quechua farmers and merchants home for Christmas plunged 250 feet into a ravine in Peru’s southern Andes on Thursday, killing 42 people and injuring at least eight, authorities said.

The accident took place near dawn on a stretch of mountain highway 380 miles southeast of Lima that was so remote the nearest village didn’t have a doctor.

“The bus is completely destroyed at the bottom of the ravine, and the worst of it is that we are isolated here like many towns in Peru, without the communication” that could have saved lives, said Cornelio Coaquira, mayor of Velille, who along with dozens of villagers tried to rescue survivors.

Victims were transported by truck to Espinar, where a doctor urged the governor to send gasoline for the town’s one ambulance.

The cause of the accident was still under investigation, said Alberto Palomino of the Cusco Highway Police.