MEXICO CITY — Forensics experts said Monday that chunks of flesh found in the apartment of an aspiring horror novelist were human and that DNA tests were planned to confirm whether they came from his girlfriend’s body.
Dr. Rodolfo Rojo, chief medical examiner for Mexico City’s prosecutor’s office, said flesh found on the plate and frying pan in suspect Jose Luis Calva’s apartment corresponded to parts missing from the corpse of his 32-year-old girlfriend, Alejandra Galeana.
Police found Galeana’s body in a closet in Calva’s apartment last week. Prosecutors said she had been strangled and partially dismembered.
Police said a search also uncovered an unfinished novel by Calva titled “Cannibalistic Instincts.”
Suicide bomber, mom struggle; 5 in family die
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — A woman who tried to stop her son from carrying out a suicide bomb attack triggered an explosion in the family’s home in southern Afghanistan that killed the would-be bomber, his mother and three siblings, police said Monday.
The would-be bomber had been studying at a madrassa, or religious school, in Pakistan, and when he returned home to Uruzgan province announced that he planned to carry out a suicide attack, Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary said.
Surviving family members told police that the suicide vest exploded during a struggle between the mother and her son, said Juma Gul Himat, Uruzgan’s police chief.
Israel-Hezbollah swap opens door
NAQOURA, LEBANON — Israel exchanged a Hezbollah prisoner and the bodies of two Lebanese fighters for the corpse of an Israeli civilian Monday, a move that could pave the way for a deal involving the Israeli soldiers whose capture sparked the Israel-Hezbollah war.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s office said the swap was “in the framework of negotiations to return the captured soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser.”
Hezbollah has insisted the soldiers would be released only in exchange for the freedom of all Lebanese prisoners held in Israel. But Monday’s swap could be a sign the Shiite Muslim militant group is willing to negotiate.
90 die in hospital “horror story”
LONDON — Britain’s health chief apologized Monday for an outbreak of a deadly bacterial infection in hospitals that left 90 people dead, but he insisted the incident was an isolated one.
A report into the deaths by Britain’s health watchdog said nurses working for the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells hospital trust in southeastern England did not wash their hands and left patients lying in their own excrement.
British Health Secretary Alan Johnson said the report, which included photos of filthy hospital showers, sinks and toilets, was a “horror story.” More than 1,000 patients were infected with Clostridium difficile, a potentially fatal antibiotic-resistant “superbug,” at three hospitals between April 2004 and September 2006.
Passenger jets clip on runway
LONDON — Two big passenger jets collided while taxiing on a runway at London’s Heathrow Airport on Monday night, but there were no injuries, officials said.
“It was a minor collision in between two planes who just clipped each other,” a fire brigade spokesman said, speaking anonymously. “There was no fire, no injuries, no damage.”
The planes involved were a British Airways Boeing 747 and a Sri Lankan Airlines Airbus A340, the brigade said.
Passengers on both planes were evacuated safely.
