■ BRAZIL
UN criticizes police killings
Increasingly violent police operations aimed at combating urban crime in Rio de Janeiro are causing growing bloodshed and masking a wave of summary killings, a UN representative warned. Most of the UN special rapporteur's criticism of the situation was aimed at Rio's authorities, who have this year begun an aggressive campaign against drug gangs. Government figures show that since January, when the Rio state governor, Sergio Cabral, came to power, at least 1,072 people have been killed by the police -- a 20 percent rise from last year.
■ MEXICO
Gunmen snatch corpse
Twenty heavily armed drug hitmen snatched the body of a fellow trafficker from a morgue in northern Mexico after he died in a dramatic helicopter crash, police said on Thursday. The gunmen killed two policemen as they took the corpse from the morgue in Ensenada. The dead man was thought to be a member of the Arellano Felix drug cartel. His fellow traffickers were believed to have wanted his body to take it away for burial without having to identify themselves when claiming the corpse. He died earlier this week in a helicopter crash.
■ CANADA
Schreiber to be extradited
An arms dealer who implicated a former Canadian prime minister in an alleged kickbacks scam on Thursday lost his latest bid to avoid extradition to Germany to face fraud, bribery and tax evasion charges. The 73-year-old Karlheinz Schreiber's removal will be delayed until Dec. 1. He has fought a German extradition request ever since he was first arrested in Canada in 1999. He prompted a furor in Ottawa with revelations of an alleged relationship with former prime minister Brian Mulroney dating back more than two decades. Schreiber said Mulroney accepted cash payments of US$300,000 from his Zurich bank account at three hotel meetings in New York and Montreal.
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