MEXICO CITY
18 tourists killed when bus crashes
A bus carrying tourists who arrived on a flight from Phoenix crashed in western Mexico on Saturday, killing at least 18, bus company and Red Cross officials said.
The Vallarta Plus bus was carrying 35 passengers from Puerto Vallarta to Guadalajara when it ran off a mountain road and plunged into a ravine, Nayarit state police director Fernando Carbajal said.
Vallarta Plus spokesman Daniel Rios said as many as half of the passengers were from a flight that had left Phoenix on Friday for Guadalajara. The plane had been rerouted to Puerto Vallarta along with 17 other flights because of a fire at the Guadalajara airport.
KABUL, Afghanistan
3 slain Taliban chiefs linked to abductions
Afghan police killed three Taliban commanders allegedly involved in the abduction of 23 South Koreans, the Interior Ministry said Saturday.
The operation took place Friday in the Qarabagh district of Ghazni province, where insurgents seized the 23 South Koreans on July 19, the ministry said.
It did not provide any further details or the identities of the slain Taliban. There have been several military operations in Ghazni since the release of the last of the captives Aug. 30.
MOSCOW
Ex-Chechen official held in reporter’s death
Russian investigators have arrested a former Chechen official and accused him of organizing the killing of Anna Politkovskaya, the independent journalist and high-profile Kremlin critic, a Russian newspaper and her former editor said Saturday.
The suspected official, Shamil Burayev, was detained in Moscow on Thursday. Burayev was once the leader of Achkhoi-Martan, one of the administrative districts in Chechnya, but was dismissed from the post several years ago. He also ran unsuccessfully for the Chechen presidency in 2003.
Politkovskaya, 48, was fatally shot outside her apartment in October. She had earned recognition as one of the most vocal of Russia’s remaining critics of President Vladimir Putin and had been criticized in Russian government circles for her reporting on official brutality and crime in the two wars in Chechnya since 1994.
LONDON
Parents of missing girl to launch ad campaign
The family of a 4-year-old British girl missing in Portugal since May said Saturday that it was planning a $160,000 ad campaign urging people to keep looking for the child. Her parents have been named suspects in the case.
The newspaper, television and billboard campaign will be focused on Spain, Portugal and other parts of Europe and will be paid for using donations from a
$2 million fund set up to help find Madeleine McCann, her uncle, John McCann, said in a statement.
“I hope that the general public will continue to support us in this. It is so important that we remember – ‘don’t you forget about me,’ our lovely wee Madeleine,” he said, speaking as the fund’s administrator.
Saturday’s announcement followed the family’s decision not to spend the proceeds from the fund on legal costs for Madeline’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann.
