$100,000 reward offered

$100,000 reward offered

CHICAGO — Jennifer Hudson and her family are offering a $100,000 reward for the safe return of her missing 7-year-old nephew.

Julian King has been missing since the Friday shooting deaths of Hudson’s mother and brother at the family home on Chicago’s South Side.

Hudson publicist Lisa Kasteler issued a statement Sunday saying the Oscar-winning entertainer and her family would offer the reward. The family asks that any information be given to Chicago police.

The reward comes as police ramp up search efforts and have transferred custody of a “person of interest” in the killings to state authorities.

Talks with the Taliban?

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A major push to open negotiations with the Taliban on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border will begin today at a summit of leading political figures from the two countries, as the U.S.-backed governments in Kabul and Islamabad face a mounting threat from Islamic extremists.

Pakistani Taliban, based in the country’s tribal border area with Afghanistan, have joined the battle in Afghanistan and also taken on Islamabad. Nevertheless, the assembly of 50 people, called a jirga, which will meet for two days in Islamabad with the backing of both governments, is likely to question the continued presence of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The Bush administration is divided about the wisdom of trying to negotiate with the Taliban and also about the idea that more moderate Taliban can be drawn away from their extremist colleagues.

Ahmadinejad is ill

TEHRAN, Iran — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday he is suffering from exhaustion, and two allies said he was suffering under the strain of his job, in a rare disclosure apparently designed to combat rumors the hard-line leader is more seriously ill.

A parliament member who confirmed Ahmadinejad’s illness accused opponents of using it as an excuse to cast doubt on whether the increasingly unpopular president will run for a second term next year.

The months ahead are critical for Ahmadinejad if he wants to try to rebuild his political base and rebut critics who point to his unfulfilled campaign promises, including his pledge to extend Iran’s oil revenues to poorer provinces around the country.

Expanding food testing

HONG KONG — The discovery of excessive levels of the industrial chemical melamine in Chinese eggs has prompted Hong Kong authorities to expand testing to include meat products imported from China, a senior official said Sunday.

The move follows the announcement late Saturday that Hong Kong testers had found 4.7 parts per million of melamine in imported eggs produced by a division of China’s Dalian Hanwei Enterprise Group. The legal limit for melamine in foodstuffs in Hong Kong is 2.5 ppm.

Hong Kong Secretary for Food and Health York Chow said the melamine may have come from feed given to the chickens that laid the eggs.

Swarm of bees attacks

RIVIERA BEACH, Fla. — A 70-year-old woman was injured and three dogs died after a swarm of bees terrorized a neighborhood in South Florida.

Authorities say crews removed 50 pounds of honeycomb from the side of a home in Palm Beach County after Friday’s attack. The hive has been contained.

The bees swarmed Nancy Hill and her two dogs. Hill was treated at a hospital, but the dogs died. The bees also attacked two other dogs in the neighborhood. One of those died and the other was injured.

Lab tests should determine whether the bees were Africanized bees, also known as killer bees. Their stings are no more potent than an ordinary bee’s, but they are far more aggressive and attack in swarms.

Syria condemns U.S. raid

DAMASCUS, Syria — U.S. military helicopters launched an extremely rare attack Sunday on Syrian territory close to the border with Iraq, killing eight people in a strike the government in Damascus condemned as “serious aggression.”

A U.S. military official said the raid by special forces targeted the foreign fighter network that travels through Syria into Iraq. The Americans have been unable to shut the network down in the area because Syria was out of the military’s reach.

Combined dispatches