■ Mexico
Former rebel joins march
Former Zapatista rebel Subcomandante Marcos joined thousands of marchers in the capital on Sunday demanding the release of 49 persons jailed after a police eviction of street flower vendors. The former leader of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, which sprang up in 1994 in the southern state of Chiapas, joined the crowd, which also demanded respect for the human rights of the detainees, jailed three weeks ago. The protesters chanted "freedom for political prisoners" and "we are all Atenco," referring to the continued custody of 49 persons after a police crackdown in the town of San Salvador Atenco on May 4.
■ Nicaragua
Strange political bedfellows
The leftist Sandinista Party, which fought a bloody war against Contra rebels in the 1980s, chose a former Contra leader as running mate on Sunday for perennial presidential candidate Daniel Ortega. Jaime Morales Carazo, 70, a former banker and political leader of the conservative US-backed Contras, will run for the vice presidency on Ortega's ticket, a Sandinista Party meeting announced. While politics does make strange bedfellows, Morales Carazo's enthusiasm for running mate Ortega -- who led the Sandinista regime from 1979 to 1990 -- seemed muted.
■ United States
Rock the `right' way
It may only be rock 'n' roll, the music born of anti-establishment rebels, but conservatives can like it too. Sure, Neil Young just released Let's Impeach the President and Green Day scored a huge hit with its 2004 American Idiot album, one track featuring the anti-Bush lyric Zieg Heil to the President Gasman. "But some rock songs really are conservative -- and there are more of them than you might think," political reporter John Miller wrote on the Web site of the US conservative magazine National Review. Starting with The Who's Won't Get Fooled Again, deemed the number one right-leaning rock anthem, Miller's list of "The 50 greatest conservative rock songs" will be published in the magazine's June 5 issue.
■ United States
Ex-cop assaults boy
A former sheriff's deputy and police sergeant was arrested for allegedly posing as a police officer and abducting and sexually assaulting a teenage boy in Las Vegas, Corona police said on Sunday. Shawn Shelton, 39, was arrested on Friday evening by officers acting on a tip from Las Vegas police, a spokesman said. Police said Shelton flashed his old police badge at a 14-year-old boy at a Las Vegas bus stop last Sunday and ordered the victim into his black Hummer SUV.
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