Chinese tainted-milk victim's father held

Beijing

Chinese police detained the father of a child sickened by tainted milk apparently to prevent him and other parents from holding a news conference to complain about proposed compensation for their ill children, a lawyer said Friday.

Dairies announced a $160 million compensation plan this week as at least 17 people went on trial for the contamination that killed at least six children and sickened nearly 300,000 others. The milk contained the industrial chemical melamine, which caused kidney stones.

The parents "said the compensation was unilaterally set by the companies with no participation from victims' families," said Li Fangping, a lawyer for some of the parents.

Twenty-two dairies sent a mass New Year's text message to Chinese mobile phone users apologizing for the scandal.

Nairobi, Kenya

Ethiopian troops pull out of Somalia

Ethiopian troops propping up Somalia's fragile transitional government on Friday began a partial withdrawal from the seaside capital of Mogadishu, a move that many Somalis fear will touch off a vicious power struggle among Islamist factions and clan militias.

With U.S. support, the Ethiopians invaded Somalia two years ago, ousting a relatively diverse Islamic movement that had briefly captured Mogadishu and installing in its place Somalia's first internationally recognized government since 1991.

But the Ethiopians — Somalia's historic enemies — and the fragile government headed by President Abdullahi Yusuf almost immediately faced a brutal insurgency of clan militias and Islamist fighters. An estimated 10,000 people have been killed, and more than 1 million are displaced across the drought-stricken country. Yusuf resigned Monday, conceding that he had failed to unite the fragmented country, and the transitional government is verging on collapse.

The fiercest and most radical of the Islamist militias, known as the Shabab — meaning "youth" in Arabic — has been gathering momentum, recruiting young, jobless men, but is beginning to showing signs of internal division.

Mexico City

Farmer confesses to killing doctor

Police in western Mexico have arrested a farmworker who allegedly hacked a doctor to death with a machete for refusing to treat his son.

Prosecutors in the Pacific coast state of Jalisco say 25-year-old suspect Ricardo Garcia Barajas has confessed to killing Dr. Laura Avila, who was found dead in the rural health clinic she was staffing on Dec. 26.

Garcia Barajas was quoted as saying that when he took his infant son to the clinic, he was told that he should return the next day during normal office hours.

Berlin

Picasso, Matisse works stolen

Thieves stole works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and others from a Berlin gallery over the New Year's holiday, police said Friday.

More than 30 works — worth an estimated $250,000 — were stolen, apparently between Wednesday afternoon and lunchtime Thursday from the Fasanengalerie, a private gallery near western Berlin's central shopping district.

The etchings, prints and sculptures included "Profil au fond noir," a 1947 work by Picasso; "Nude in a rocking chair," a Matisse print from 1913; and "Le Boupeut," a 1962 color print by Georges Braque.

Also

Authorities in Saudi Arabia have beheaded two Sri Lankans convicted of robbing and killing a Sudanese man.

Seattle Times new services