Paula strengthens to Category 2

Paula strengthens to Category 2

cancun, mexico

A strengthening Hurricane Paula roared toward Mexico’s resort-dotted Yucatan Peninsula on Tuesday night.

The hurricane smashed homes and forced schools to cancel classes in Honduras early Tuesday, then grew into a Category 2 storm with top sustained winds of 100 miles per hour on its way to the Yucatan, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

Moving north at near 9 mph, Paula’s center was expected to pass just to the east of Cancun this morning, and was expected to decrease in forward speed after that, the center said.

8 feared dead in crash of cargo plane

kabul, afghanistan

A cargo plane contracted by a U.S.-based company crashed into mountains east of Afghanistan’s capital Kabul, with initial reports saying all eight people aboard were killed, an Afghan airport official said.

The plane was flying from Bagram Air Field, the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan, when it went down east of the capital Tuesday about 8 p.m., Kabul Airport Director Mohammad Yaqub Rassuli said.

An Associated Press photographer near the scene saw wreckage ablaze on a hillside.

The cause of the crash wasn’t immediately known. Weather conditions were clear Tuesday evening.

Strike in France shuts Eiffel Tower

paris

A nationwide strike by major French unions canceled flights and trains and shut the Eiffel Tower on Tuesday, disrupting daily life for many and putting new pressure on the government to drop a plan to raise the retirement age by two years.

Unionized train and Paris public transport workers vowed to stay off the job for at least another day, and police said at least 1.2 million people marched in protests against the plan.

That could be a signal of rising momentum for the movement facing off against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s governing conservatives over its proposal to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62.

The government has refused to back down, saying the plan is the only way to save the money-draining pension system.

Nobel winner’s wife hopes to collect prize

beijing

The wife of the imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo said Tuesday she hopes to travel to Norway to collect the Nobel Peace Prize on his behalf, though for now she can only leave her Beijing home under police escort.

China, meanwhile, claimed the award was an attack on the country and an attempt to change its political system, and retaliated by canceling another set of meetings with the Norwegian government.

In brief interviews by phone, Liu Xia said her husband has started receiving better food since the Oslo-based Nobel committee announced the award last Friday — honoring his more than two decades of advocacy of human rights and peaceful democratic change that started with the demonstrations at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thief’s hand cut off

tehran

An Iranian court ordered the hand of a convicted thief cut off, and officials said this kind of punishment would continue, ISNA news agency reported Tuesday.

The hand of a two-time convicted thief was cut off in front of other prisoners in a jail in Mashad, in north-eastern Iran, the city’s prosecutor-general was quoted as saying.

Combined dispatches