In brief: Outlawed group has new leader

Cairo, Egypt – Egypt’s largest opposition movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, announced Saturday it has chosen a new leader, a conservative academic who looks unlikely to challenge the government’s relentless crackdown on the group.

The outlawed Muslim Brotherhood managed to make a strong showing in 2005’s parliamentary election with candidates who ran as independents, and soon after the government intensified its campaign of arrests against the group.

Mohammed Badie, a 66-year-old professor of veterinary pathology, indicated he would avoid taking the group in a direction that would directly confront the government through such steps as pro-democracy street protests or an attempt to turn the movement into an official political party.

Seized reporter found dead

Mexico City – The bloody and broken corpse of a radio journalist known for his broadcasts on drug trafficking was found Saturday on a highway a few miles from the city where he was kidnapped, prosecutors said.

Linea Directa radio station reporter Jose Luis Romero was forced at gunpoint out of a Los Mochis restaurant on Dec. 30. A few hours later, gunmen killed the chief police investigator in the northern Mexican state of Sinaloa who had started investigating the kidnapping.

The discovery of Romero’s body marks the 59th journalist killed in Mexico since 2000, according to Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission.