Honduras
6 drug runners are slain in eastern battle, police say
TEGUCIGALPA - Police say six drug traffickers were killed and two police officers and a teenager injured in a three-hour gunbattle in a rural province in eastern Honduras.
Security Minister Oscar Alvarez said a group of criminals shot at officers when they were patrolling in the city of Catacamas, 62 miles east of the capital and near the border with Nicaragua.
After the clash Tuesday night, police arrested seven suspected criminals and confiscated an arsenal that included 19 high-powered rifles.
Alvarez said the detainees worked for drug cartels in the province of Olancho, a vast area used to traffic cocaine from Colombia into the United States.
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democratic republic
of the Congo
Worst place to be a woman is even worse, study finds
This African nation has been called the worst place on Earth to be a woman, but a study released Wednesday shows that it's even worse than previously thought: 1,152 women are raped every day, a rate of 48 per hour.
That rate is 26 times more than the previous estimate of 16,000 rapes reported in one year by the United Nations.
Michelle Hindin, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health who specializes in gender-based violence, said the rate could be even higher. The source of the data, she noted, is a survey conducted through face-to-face interviews.
Congo, a nation of 70 million people that is equal in size to Western Europe, has been plagued by decades of war. Its vast forests are rife with militias that have systematically used rape to destroy communities.
The analysis, which will be published in the American Journal of Public Health in June, shows that more than 400,000 women had been raped in Congo during a 12-month period between 2006 and 2007.
Slovakia
Would-be Internet cannibal wounded in police shootout
BRATISLAVA - A would-be cannibal was arrested and in critical condition after being wounded in a gunbattle with officers during an undercover operation, officials said Wednesday. A policeman was also wounded.
The suspect, 43, used the Internet to search for a person who wanted to commit suicide and would agree to let him eat the body, police said. A Swiss citizen agreed but later changed his mind and told authorities.
An undercover officer who pretended he was the would-be victim was used during Tuesday's operation, police said.
TA3 television said the suspect, a father of two young daughters, lived in a nearby village of Sokol.
Britain
Downing St. admits using phony names since 2005
LONDON - If you get a letter from No. 10 Downing Street, don't bother with a personalized response. The person who signed it probably used a fake name.
Downing Street said that, for years, the staff at the prime minister's office has been using bogus names in its correspondence with members of the public.
It said that use of pseudonyms was introduced in 2005, after an official was tracked down by a constituent she'd been in contact with and threatened at her home address.
But the practice didn't come to light until Wednesday, when the country's Channel 4 News exposed one such official as imaginary.
Mexico
188 bodies found in Durango surpass 183 in Tamaulipas
MEXICO CITY - Security forces searching mass graves in the northern state of Durango have unearthed eight more bodies, authorities said Wednesday, bringing the total to 188 and making it the largest discovery yet of corpses secretly buried in regions plagued by drug-gang fighting.
The toll surpasses the 183 bodies found in pits last month in Tamaulipas, a state bordering Texas.
Soldiers recovered the latest eight bodies Tuesday, and digging continued at five graves discovered last month in the state capital, Durango City, state Public Safety Department spokesman Fernando Rios told The Associated Press.
Durango authorities said some of the victims had been dead for up to four years, while others were buried as recently as three months ago.
The Associated Press
