World Digest
Utah man shot to death in Guatemalan bus robbery

	RODRIGO ABD / AP Mudslide victim buried Rubinio Najera, left, and other relatives cry as his sister Rosa Najera is buried yesterday in Tiquisate, 90 miles south of Guatemala City, Guatemala. A Christmas Day mudslide near San Bernardino, Calif., killed 13 and left one person missing and presumed dead.
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Five attackers in a pickup intercepted the bus carrying the tourists, all Mormons from Utah, near Colomba, 125 miles southwest of the capital, Guatemala City. The Americans were traveling from the mountain city of Quetzaltenango to the Mexican border.

The men forced the bus off the road and fired their automatic weapons as they climbed aboard, said Jose Boch, a spokesman for police in Retalhuleu, the largest city near the site of the attack.

Brett Richards, 52, of Ogden, Utah, was fatally shot in the chest, he said. Guatemalan bus driver Filiberto Roca was shot in the right ankle. There were no other reports of injury.

Police said the group was vacationing and not involved in religious activities. Hometowns of the other passengers weren't immediately available.

At least two killed in Haiti rally calling for Aristide's ouster

	Jean-Bertrand Aristide

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — At least two people were killed yesterday when supporters of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide clashed with demonstrators calling for his ouster in the second mass street protests of the year, witnesses said.

They said thousands of demonstrators, accusing the former priest and his government of corruption and trampling on democracy, took to the streets in Port-au-Prince to be met by Aristide supporters who fired guns and threw bottles and rocks.

In recent months, there has been repeated clashes between backers and supporters of Aristide. The Jan. 1 bicentennial celebrations of Haiti's freedom from French rule as the world's first black republic were marred by violence.

Aristide became Haiti's first democratically elected leader but was deposed in a bloody 1991 coup. He was restored to power in the poorest country in the Americas by a U.S.-led invasion in 1994.

He was elected to a second term in 2000 but has been at odds with opposition parties and international donors over the tainted results of parliamentary elections that year.

U.S. suspends talks with Cuba over migration

HAVANA — U.S. officials announced yesterday the suspension of talks with Cuba over migration, in a further sign of deteriorating relations between the two nations.

U.S. officials said the talks — which are scheduled for every six months and were to be held today in Havana — were canceled because Cuban officials refused to discuss several key issues involving an accord governing the legal flow of migrants from Cuba to the United States.

Among the issues is Cuba's failure to grant exit visas to about 200 Cubans who already have been issued permanent entry visas by the United States.

The accord, reached after the 1994 rafters crisis in which tens of thousands of Cubans tried to cross the Florida Strait, was designed to prevent another mass exodus of Cubans to U.S. shores.

Thirty-one tremors shake up Iranians in southwestern province

TEHRAN — Thousands of Iranians spent the night outdoors in the rain after 31 tremors jolted the oil-rich province of Khuzestan, sparking fears of an earthquake like the one that razed the city of Bam, state television said yesterday.

It said people had been afraid to go indoors since early Tuesday, when the first of the tremors struck Izeh and Masjed Soleiman in the southwestern province.

Iran is criss-crossed with fault lines, and tremors are common, but the death of more than 30,000 people in Bam in a Dec. 26 quake has people fearful of another disaster.

Also ...

Eastern Orthodox Christians in Russia celebrated Christmas yesterday with church services and pop concerts. In Bethlehem, families exchanged visits and restaurants served up elaborate feasts. Christmas falls on Jan. 7 for Orthodox Christians in the Holy Land, Russia and other Eastern Orthodox churches that use the old Julian calendar instead of the 16th-century Gregorian calendar adopted by Catholics and Protestants and commonly used in secular life around the world.

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