Reef may take years to heal after Hurricane Wilma

A fragile coral reef off the coast of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula could take more than a century to recover from a thrashing by Hurricane Wilma last month, the government said Friday.

Mexico's National Protected Natural Areas Commission, known as Conanp, said the storm's three-day rampage across the eastern region in late October damaged a 25-mile stretch of delicate reefs off the island of Cozumel.

"The area was hit hard by the storm and it could take at least 100 years for the reef to recover," Conanp regional director Alfredo Arellano said in a telephone interview from the resort city of Cancún.

Cozumel's delicate coral gardens form part of an archipelago of reefs stretching for hundreds of miles southward to the coast of Honduras, comprising the largest reef system in the hemisphere.

Birmingham, England

Damage to graves of Muslims probed

British police said Friday they were investigating the desecration of Muslim graves in a cemetery close to the scene of recent violent clashes between black and South Asian youths.

Some 30 headstones were knocked over late Thursday and early Friday in the Muslim section of Handsworth Cemetery in Birmingham, a city in central England, area police said. They said they were treating the incident as "racially aggravated criminal damage."

Sky News TV reported that notes had been left on the graves reading "Death to all Muslim rapists," referring to a 14-year-old girl's alleged sexual assault by South Asian men.

Last month, fighting broke out between members of the Afro-Caribbean and South Asian communities in Birmingham's Lozells district, following a meeting over the alleged sexual assault.

Baku, Azerbaijan

Campaign bosses arrested, parties say

Two of Azerbaijan's leading opposition parties said Friday police had arrested their campaign managers on the eve of Sunday's parliamentary election, seen as a test of democracy in the ex-Soviet state.

A spokesman for the National Front party said campaign boss Qabil Mamedzayev had been detained. Its partner in the main opposition bloc, the Democratic Party, said earlier its campaign manager had been arrested.

Azerbaijan, an oil-producing region in the turbulent south Caucasus region, has yet to hold an election judged free and fair by international observers. Sunday's vote is under close scrutiny for signs of official interference.

Jerusalem

Israelis mark killing of Yitzhak Rabin

Family and friends lit candles and laid wreaths at Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's grave Friday to begin a week of commemorations marking the 10th anniversary of the former leader's assassination.

Rabin, who negotiated the historic 1993 Oslo peace accords with the Palestinians, was assassinated on Nov. 4, 1995, by Yigal Amir, an ultranationalist Jew who considered Rabin a traitor. Amir is serving a life sentence for the killing.

While dozens of Israelis flocked Friday to the square in Tel Aviv where Rabin was gunned down following a peace rally, mourners in Jerusalem gathered at his grave.

"What he started will never be forgotten and we shall continue to act in the same way until we shall achieve the most noble goal of our life, and that is peace among ourselves and our neighbors," said Shimon Peres, Israel's vice premier, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Rabin and Yasser Arafat for forging the interim peace accord.

Also

Deadly ferry sinking: An overloaded ferry capsized Friday in the Arabian Sea off southern Pakistan, killing about 60 people, officials said.

Theater fire: A fire in a movie complex adjacent to Malaysia's iconic Petronas Twin Towers late Friday triggered panic among patrons who fled screaming and coughing in the thick, acrid smoke, witnesses said. No serious injuries were reported.

Suharto ill: Former Indonesian dictator Suharto, 84, has been admitted to a hospital in the Indonesian capital for anemia as a result of intestinal bleeding, local media reported today.

Compiled from The Associated Press and Reuters