■ SAUDI ARABIA
Murder suspect caught
Security forces have arrested a Saudi man for allegedly being involved in the February shooting deaths of four French nationals, an Interior Ministry statement said. Majid bin Rashid al-Harbi was arrested in a desert area some 100km south of the northern city of Hail, the ministry said late on Sunday. Last month, the Saudi Interior Ministry said Waleed bin Mutlaq al-Radadi, the alleged mastermind and one of the triggermen in the shooting, was killed. The ministry claimed al-Harbi was with al-Radadi when they first saw the French nationals asking for directions by the roadside. The French nationals were shot dead on Feb. 26 on the side of a road leading to Medina.
■ NICARAGUA
Police arrest PRC illegals
Police have arrested 38 illegal Chinese immigrants on their way to the US after the boat in which they were traveling collided with another craft on a river, Chinese state radio said yesterday. The accident, which claimed five lives, happened early on Friday, the radio said in a report carried on its Web site. Three Chinese were still unaccounted for, it added. The boat was also carrying 14 undocumented Ecuadorean immigrants, the report said. Repatriation of the Chinese or official assistance to them could be complicated by the fact that China and Nicaragua have no diplomatic relations, Managua maintaining formal ties with Taipei.
■ IRAQ
Terrorist prison camp raided
US and Iraqi troops raided a suspected al-Qaeda prison camp north of Baghdad and freed 41 men, some of whom said they had been held for four months, the US military said yesterday. The air and ground operation on Sunday followed a tip-off from a local resident. The camp was 10km south of Baqubah in Diyala Province, where many insurgents have set up new bases to escape a major security crackdown in Baghdad. "The individuals, who were living in a small, concrete and mud compound ... were sleeping in cramped rooms on dirty blankets and pillows," the military said.
■ VENEZUELA
RCTV goes off the air
Despite protests by democracy activists, Venezuela's oldest television network went off the air at midnight on Sunday, victim of a fresh push by President Hugo Chavez to tighten his grip over the nation's media. RCTV screens went black after the station broadcast previously-recorded images of its teary-eyed employees singing the national anthem. The channel's successor, Chavez-backed TVes, began broadcasting minutes later. Network president Marcel Granier told US-based Univision television that Chavez was driven by "a megalomaniacal desire to establish a totalitarian dictatorship."
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