morelia mexico

A government media tour to promote tourism in southwestern Mexico went awry when the 13 reporters on the trip were briefly kidnapped by machete-wielding indigenous communal landowners, officials said Sunday. Fifteen people trying to film a beer commercial were also abducted.

Nobody was harmed during the abductions Saturday, said a Michoacan state government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to the media. Government officials were still negotiating Sunday to recover the cameras and other media equipment stolen by the Nahua Indians.

The indigenous group was upset that Grupo Modelo, the maker of Corona beer, had not asked their permission to film the commercial on their property, said the official.

They first kidnapped the Mexican reporters after mistaking them for the Grupo Modelo team, the official said.

Mandela family friend at wheel in fatal crash

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) Nelson Mandelas office says a close family friend was driving the car in which Mandelas great-granddaughter was riding when she was killed in a crash.

A statement from the Nelson Mandela Foundation on Sunday for the first time named the driver. The statement says he is 23-year-old Sizwe Mankazana. He is the son of Zwelakhe Mankazana, the partner of Zenani Mandela-Dlamini, who is the great-aunt of the 13-year-old who was killed and who shares her name.
Man who cut off arm out of intensive care

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) The mother of a man who cut off most of his arm after it was caught in a furnace for three days says he is out of intensive care.

Jonathan Metz underwent surgery at St. Francis Hospital to close a wound where he tried to cut off his arm after getting it caught in the furnace. He succeeded in cutting off most of his arm, and paramedics completed the amputation.

He is expected to be fitted for a prosthetic arm.

Thirty-one-year-old Metz was trying to repair his basement furnace last week when his left arm became wedged in the furnaces vertical slots.
Ethiopian family killed in Seattle fire

SEATTLE (AP) Relatives and friends have identified five people killed in a fast-moving Seattle apartment fire as an Ethiopian immigrant and her two nieces and two nephews.

Killed were 22-year-old Eyerusalem Gebregiorgis, her two nieces, six-year-old Nisreen Shamam and seven-year-old Nyella Smith, and two nephews, 13-year-old Joseph Gebregiorgis and 5-year-old Yaseen Shamam.

The extended family came from Ethiopia in 1989.

The womans sister, Helen Gebregiorgis, the mother of three of the children, fled the apartment with another child.
Japanese space probe returns after seven years

ADELAIDE, Australia A fiery burst of light over the Australian Outback late Sunday marked the return of a Japanese space probe that scientists hope carried samples from an asteroid that could offer insights into the creation and makeup of the solar system.

After travelling six billion kilometres in seven years, the Hayabusa explorer incinerated on re-entry after jettisoning a capsule expected to contain the first asteroid dust ever collected, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said.

The capsule parachuted to Earth within the Woomera Prohibited Area, a remote military zone 485 kilometres northwest of the South Australian state capital of Adelaide.