Around the world

Hit-man suspect will face trial

MEXICO CITY — An alleged founding member of Mexico's feared Zetas — a gang of hit men linked to the Gulf drug cartel — will stand trial on organized-crime, drug and weapons charges, prosecutors announced Friday.

Jaime Gonzalez Duran, known as "the Hummer," will also face charges of transactions with illicit funds.

Gonzalez Duran is an army deserter who was arrested in November in the northern city of Reynosa. He is allegedly one of the founding members of the Zetas, a band of cartel hit men believed responsible for massacres and beheadings.

The Attorney General's Office said three other men arrested with Gonzalez Duran will face the same charges.

pakistan

Thousands mark slaying of Bhutto

GARHI KHUDA BAKHSH, Pakistan — Tens of thousands of Pakistanis gathered Friday at the mausoleum of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on the eve of the first anniversary of her assassination, some of them walking hundreds of miles to get there.

At United Nations headquarters in New York, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he is hopeful a U.N. commission will be established in the near future to investigate Bhutto's killing in a gun and suicide bomb attack on Dec. 27, 2007.

Today, Bhutto's widower, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, is scheduled to speak in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh.

Bhutto was killed as she was leaving a rally in the garrison town of Rawalpindi, just outside the capital of Islamabad, where she was campaigning to return her Pakistan People's Party to power in parliamentary elections.

china

Trials start for six in melamine crisis

BEIJING — Six Chinese suspects went on trial Friday accused of making and selling the industrial chemical at the center of a tainted-milk scandal blamed for killing six children and sickening nearly 300,000 others.

Among those in court Friday was Zhang Yujun, 40, the owner of a workshop that was allegedly the country's largest source of melamine, the substance responsible for the health crisis that also saw Chinese food products pulled from stores worldwide, state media said.

In the same case, a second man, Zhang Yanzhang, 24, was accused of buying and reselling 230 tons of powder to others. Four other men were being tried in three separate courts.

ukraine

Search continues at collapse site

KIEV — Rescue workers were combing through piles of concrete and glass Friday in an ongoing search for survivors from an apartment building explosion in southern Ukraine, but authorities said hope was waning as the death toll climbed to 27.

Salvage teams pulled 21 people out alive from the rubble after the five-story building collapsed Wednesday night in the Crimean peninsula resort of Yevpatoriya.

britain

Conjoined twin dies

LONDON — Faith Williams, the month-old conjoined twin who survived a lengthy surgery to separate her from her sister, died Christmas Day, London's Great Ormond Street Hospital said.

Her doctor, Agostino Pierro, said in a statement that while Faith's death was very sad, it was not unexpected.

Faith and Hope were born Nov. 26, joined from their chests to the lower part of their stomachs. They had separate hearts but shared a liver and intestines. Hope died hours after doctors completed the 11-hour operation.

india

Militant attacks down in region

SRINAGAR — Militant activity in the disputed region of Kashmir has fallen to its lowest levels since an anti-India rebellion began nearly two decades ago, police said Friday.

The number of militant attacks in 2008 fell 40 percent to 709 — the first time the number of attacks dropped below 1,000 — said Kuldeep Khoda, senior police official of Jammu-Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state.

In 2007, roughly 1,100 militant incidents were recorded in Indian Kashmir, he said.

Civilian casualties also fell to fewer than 100 for the first time since 1989 when militants began fighting Indian rule, Khoda said in a statement.

More than 68,000 people have died in the two decades of violence, most of them civilians