Mexico to raise tariffs

Mexico to raise tariffs

MEXICO CITY — Mexico said Monday it will increase tariffs on about 90 U.S. products in retaliation for last week’s decision to end a pilot program that allowed some Mexican trucks to transport goods in the United States.

Economy Secretary Gerardo Ruiz Mateos said the U.S. decision violates a provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement that was supposed to have opened cross-border trucking by January 2000.

“We consider this U.S. action to be wrong, protectionist and a clear violation of the treaty,” Ruiz Mateos told reporters. “By deciding to protect their trucking industry, they have decided to affect other countries and the region.”

The measure will affect about $2.4 billion in trade involving approximately 90 agricultural and industrial products from 40 U.S. states. Ruiz Mateos said the department later this week will publish a list of the products, which he said were chosen to represent a large number of U.S. states and significant trade items.

Withdrawal from Iran race

TEHRAN, Iran — Former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami says he has pulled out of the race against the country’s hard-line president to avoid splitting the pro-reform vote.

Khatami says he will not run in the June 12 election so change will be easier to achieve. A copy of Monday’s statement was made available to The Associated Press.

Khatami’s entry into the race against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a month ago boosted the hopes of some reformists, who favor improving ties with the West and liberalizing Iran’s conservative Islamic government.

But two other prominent reformists have also entered the race. One of them, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, is a former hard-liner who Khatami has said has a better chance of siphoning conservatives’ votes.

N. Korea accused of torture

GENEVA — A U.N. human rights investigator accused North Korean authorities Monday of committing widespread torture in prisons that he called “death traps.”

Life in the reclusive communist-ruled country is “dire and desperate,” said Vitit Muntarbhorn, adding that people are denied enough food to survive.

Muntarbhorn told the 47-nation Human Rights Council that whole families are routinely sent away for the crimes of one member. Once imprisoned, they suffer greatly.

“Many prisons are a death trap for the inmates,” he said.

Sang Il Hun of North Korea’s U.N. mission told the council that the report was untrue.

Quit line is too successful

LANSING, Mich. — Michigan’s Tobacco Quit Line has quit.

The hot line began last week to offer callers free nicotine patches, gum or lozenges to help them quit smoking or chewing tobacco. By Monday, the heavy volume of calls had overwhelmed the hot line.

State officials say the hot line will shut down until October because the department has run out of the free products. The new budget year starts Oct. 1.

The quit line was contacted by more than 65,600 callers in five days, and more than 400 staff members were fielding calls.

Nearly 2,200 people have enrolled in the quit tobacco program so far.

Madoff’s wife targeted

NEW YORK — Prosecutors probing Bernard Madoff’s massive fraud are determined to leave his wife with almost nothing after telling a Manhattan court that they consider more than $100 million in assets, most of it listed in her name, the fruits of her husband’s crimes.

The government even included a $39,000 Steinway piano and $65,000 in silverware, both owned by Ruth Madoff, in items it said it will try to force the Madoffs to forfeit. The list was in a three-page document filed in U.S. District Court late Sunday.

Seattle paper in new form

SEATTLE — The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the city’s oldest newspaper, will roll off the presses for the last time today, its owner said Monday.

The Hearst Corp. also said it will keep the P-I alive online “as a new type of digital business with a robust community news and information Web site at its core.”

Post-Intelligencer Publisher Roger Oglesby said in an interview that the online venture would have a professional news staff of about 20 or 25. The vast majority of the P-I’s 167 employees, almost all in news, will lose their jobs.

Combined dispatches