No charge against mother of baby in sewer
BEIJING – The mother of a Chinese baby boy who was rescued from a sewer pipe beneath a restroom shortly after birth is unlikely to face criminal charges because authorities concluded he fell into the toilet accidentally, local officials and media reports said Thursday.
The baby was released from a hospital to his maternal grandparents late Wednesday, while his 22-year-old mother remains under medical care, the state-run Jinhua Evening News reported, in an account confirmed by a local police official who declined to give his name.
Police later concluded that the incident was an accident and that the woman did not initially come forward because she was frightened, but that she later started telling the truth, the Jinhua Evening News and a Pujiang county propaganda official said.
11 people disappear from bar in Mexico City
MEXICO CITY – Eleven young people were kidnapped in broad daylight from a rough Mexico City bar, just 20 days after the grandson of civil rights leader Malcolm X was beaten to death at a nightclub in the capital, anguished relatives said Thursday.
The apparent mass abduction was particularly brazen, even by Mexico City standards, happening in daytime just off the Paseo de la Reforma, the city’s main boulevard, and about 1½ blocks from the U.S. Embassy.
The bar that houses the after-hours club where the youths disappeared Sunday, also is only a few blocks from the city’s main police headquarters in the Zona Rosa.
The known missing include six men, most in their 20s, a 16-year-old boy and four young women.
Russian officials urged to allow U.S. adoptions
MOSCOW – Members of a U.S. congressional delegation visiting Moscow have urged Russian officials to allow the completion of U.S. adoptions of Russian children, which were caught in limbo by the Russian ban.
The ban on adoptions by Americans was signed by President Vladimir Putin in December in retaliation for a U.S. law that sanctions Russians said to have violated human rights. A number of American families were in different phases of a complex adoption process when the Russian ban came.
Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, who was part of the delegation, said Thursday during a meeting with members of the lower house of Russia’s parliament that the U.S. is ready to provide all the necessary guarantees that the children would be given due care.
Officials seize 2,500 rolls of toliet paper
CARACAS, Venezuela – Police in Venezuela say they have seized nearly 2,500 rolls of toilet paper in an overnight raid of a clandestine warehouse storing scarce goods.
The Thursday announcement on Twitter said that the officers raiding the garage in western Caracas also seized about 400 diapers and 7,000 liters of fruit juice.
Police chief Luis Karabin told Venezuelan news agency AVN that police, acting on a telephone tip, found “merchandise that we know is scarce on the shelves and doesn’t reach the people.”
Toilet paper is hard to find in Venezuelan grocery stores, as are staple food items such as sugar, milk and cooking oil.
The socialist government says the shortages are part of a plot by opponents to destabilize the country.
Associated Press
