Attacks kill 11 in Afghanistan

Attacks kill 11 in Afghanistan

kabul, afghanistan

A series of bomb blasts and insurgents attacks killed 11 people across Afghanistan on Sunday, including five NATO service members and three Afghan police, officials said.

The strikes, which come a day after Taliban fighters stormed a NATO base in eastern Afghanistan, show the insurgents’ fighting spirit has not been broken despite a surge of U.S. troops and firepower.

Also Sunday, the Afghan president’s office said the former ambassador-designate to Pakistan, who was seized by gunmen two years ago in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, has been released and is back home safe.

FBI: Man arrested was declared dead

jackson, miss.

A man who was declared legally dead 16 years ago in Mississippi was arrested Sunday in the kidnapping of a slain Las Vegas girl whose body was found in the woods of central Louisiana, the FBI said.

FBI spokeswoman Sheila Thorne said Thomas Steven Sanders was arrested early Sunday at a truck stop in Gulfport, Miss. The arrest capped a massive manhunt.

Court documents obtained by The Associated Press show Sanders abandoned his family in 1987 and was declared dead by a Mississippi court 1994. He lived unnoticed for years despite being arrested several times.

Sanders, 53, was wanted in the kidnapping 12-year-old Lexis Roberts, whose skeleton was found by hunters early last month.

Hotel blast kills 7

playa de carmen, mexico

A powerful explosion likely caused by an accumulation of gas killed 7 people, including five Canadian tourists, Sunday at a large resort hotel on Mexico’s Caribbean coast, authorities said.

Two Mexican employees of the sprawling, 676-room hotel Grand Riviera Princess hotel in Playa del Carmen, south of Cancun, were also killed in the blast, said Francisco Alor, attorney general of Quintana Roo, where the resorts are located.

Two other Canadians suffered severe injuries and were listed in critical condition. Ten others, including two U.S. citizens and eight Mexican employees of the hotel, suffered less-serious wounds and were listed as stable.

Greek Socialists win as debt fears rise

athens, greece

Greece’s governing Socialists emerged the winner of local government elections, despite a record low turnout and renewed pressure on the crisis-hit nation to impose a new round of drastic spending cuts.

With 99.6 percent of the vote counted nationwide, the Socialists won mayoral races in Athens and Greece’s second largest city, Thessaloniki, for the first time in 24 years.

Freed Myanmar leader calls for talks

yangon, myanmar

Democracy heroine Aung San Suu Kyi took her first steps back into Myanmar’s political minefield Sunday, vowing to press ahead in her decades-long fight for democracy while also calling for compromise with other political parties and the ruling junta.

Suu Kyi, who was freed from house arrest Saturday amid a divided political landscape and days after widely criticized elections, made clear she faces a precarious position: maneuvering between the expectations of the country’s pro-democracy movement and the realities of dealing with a clique of secretive generals who have kept her locked up for much of the past two decades.

Associated Press