■UNITED STATES
Tests prove Fossett’s fate
Genetic tests on two bones found near the wreckage of Steve Fossett’s airplane in the California mountains confirm the missing multimillionaire adventurer is dead, local authorities said on Monday. “A California Department of Justice Forensics lab has determined that items containing DNA — discovered last week — match James Stephen Fossett’s DNA,” the Madera County, California, sheriff-coroner’s office said in a statement. Office spokeswoman Erica Stuart said the match of the DNA in the bones discovered last Wednesday brings her office’s investigation to an end.
■UNITED STATES
Court convicts propagandist
A propagandist for Osama bin Laden was convicted on three charges of war crimes on Monday at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, a Yemeni, will immediately begin serving his prison term at the naval base, the Pentagon said after announcing the sentence. Pentagon prosecutors argued that al-Bahlul, about 40 years old, made videos designed to boost al-Qaeda recruitment and incite suicide bombings, the report said. He was found guilty of conspiracy, providing material support for terrorism and soliciting murder. Al-Bahlul refused to mount a defense, saying he could only be tried under Islamic Sharia law, the Miami Herald reported.
■MEXICO
State police chief killed
Gunmen killed a state police chief in the border city of Nogales and three police detectives in Guanajuato State, as a wave of drug-related violence batters Mexican security forces, authorities said on Monday. In Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, authorities on Monday found the bullet-riddled bodies of six men in a vegetable warehouse along with more than 100 shell casings from assault rifles. The bodies of three other men were found in a sport utility vehicle on a Tijuana street on Sunday. On Sunday night, Sonora state police chief Juan Manuel Pavon Felix was shot dead as he entered a hotel with his bodyguard and other officers, a statement from the state investigative police office said. In Guanajuato, the state attorney general reported that gunmen killed three state police detectives on Monday. In another attack in the same state, one detective was killed and another wounded.
■UNITED STATES
Yma Sumac dies at 86
Legendary soprano Yma Sumac, the “Peruvian Songbird who dazzled music lovers in the 1950s and 60s with her incredible range, died at an assisted living facility in Los Angeles,” her Web site said on Monday. She was 86. “It is with deep sadness, that we report that Yma Sumac passed away at 11am on Saturday, Nov. 1. It was peaceful. Those closest to her were at her side,” the Web site said. The Los Angeles Times said Sumac, who had lived in Los Angeles for the past 60 years, died of cancer.
■VENEZUELA
Lapi ineligible for office
A popular opposition politician accused of corruption who escaped from jail last year and fled to Peru cannot run for re-election as governor of the Venezuelan state of Yaracuy, the country’s top court ruled on Monday. The decision opens the way for an ally of President Hugo Chavez to win a tightly contested election for governor of the small farming state. Lapi vowed to continue his election bid despite the ruling. “I want Hugo Chavez to know — they will have to shoot me in the head to stop me fighting for democracy,” he told television station Globovision by telephone.
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