■ Mexico
Volcano breathes fire
Mexico's giant Popocatepetl volcano threw up an ash column almost 3km high and spat glowing rocks down its snow-clad slopes on Sunday, but nearby towns were not affected, officials said. Popocatepetl, whose name means "smoking mountain," spewed out the huge plume of ash and rocks in a three-minute exhalation. Sunday's activity was the latest in a recent series of disturbances which started on Dec. 1, when the 5,452m volcano showered ash on the nearby town of Amecameca.
■ Brazil
Indigenous leader killed
A leader of a native Brazilian tribe was killed days after being evicted from a piece of land in Mato Grosso du Sul state, reports said on Sunday. Dorvalino Rocha was beside a road where he had taken his community after being evicted when three men emerged from a car and one shot him in the chest. Rochas, 39, had led some 500 fellow tribesmen to the roadside site after being ordered by a court to vacate another piece of land 10 days earlier, according to news reports. The land had been set aside for indigenous peoples by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, but a judge ordered Rocha's group evicted until it could be demarcated and former owners could be compensated.
■ Haiti
UN employee shot dead
A Jordanian peacekeeper was killed in Haiti when armed men in a notorious slum opened fire on the vehicle he was patrolling in, the UN said on Sunday. Yusef Mubarak died on Saturday afternoon of multiple gunshot wounds to the head in Cite-Soleil, a violent neighborhood of the capital, Port-au-Prince. The shooting came as Haitians and more than 7,000 UN peacekeepers gear up for general elections tentatively set for Jan. 8. Another 1,600 UN police are also in the Caribbean nation. Impoverished Cite-Soleil is a stronghold of supporters of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who fled Haiti in Feb. 2004 in the face an armed uprising.
■ United States
Shooting spree kills five
Five people were found dead in apparent murder-suicide shootings at homes in two Washington suburbs, police said. Officers found the bodies of three men and one woman in a house in Great Falls when they responded to reports of gunfire on Sunday morning, local police said. Police said they believe one of those found dead at the first house was responsible for all the shootings. They treated the first shooting scene as a barricade situation until they determined that the gunman was dead after a 20-year-old man came out of the house. An investigation at the first crime scene led officers to another house in the Tyson's Corner area, where they found the body of a woman. Police said the same person appeared to have been responsible for all the deaths, but gave no further details.
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