Excerpt:  Rosarito Beach Mayor Hugo Torres always has pitched his seaside city as a cut-rate paradise. But even this relentless hometown booster is stumped these days: How do you sell the Mexican good life in the midst of a drug war?

The city’s bustling main drag, Benito Juárez Boulevard, has been the scene of two shootings since September, one a drive-by slaying of a 15-year-old boy and three other people in a pet store filled with frenzied puppies and canaries.

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Excerpt:  Iran has now produced roughly enough nuclear material to make, with added purification, a single atomic bomb, according to nuclear experts analyzing the latest report from global atomic inspectors.

The figures detailing Iran’s progress were contained in a routine update Wednesday from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been conducting inspections of the main Iranian nuclear facility at Natanz. The report concluded that as of early this month Iran had made 630 kilograms, or about 1,390 pounds, of low-enriched uranium.

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Excerpt:  A health ministry council drafted a policy Thursday of closing all schools in a prefecture if just one person there is infected with a new strain of influenza.

Under the policy, a prefectural government would also ask music concert halls, movie theaters and other facilities where many people gather to close their doors to prevent the spread of the disease.

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Excerpt:  At least five persons were killed and several more are missing when a landslide hit a mining village near Mt. Diwalwal, in Monkayo town, Compostela Valley province Thursday afternoon.

The body of six-year old Crisna Daug was pulled out by rescuers at around 6 p.m. after the landslide hit Sitio (sub-village) Depot, Barangay (village) Upper Ulip, Josephine Frasco, provincial social welfare officer, said.

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Excerpt:  Calls are pouring in about the sight of a bright light in the skies over the Edmonton area this hour.

Marcel Gobeil, who lives on a farm just west of Beaumont, was sitting in his living room when he heard what he describes as a “loud boom,” followed by the sight of bright colourful lights just before 5:30 p.m.

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Excerpt:  At 8:40 a.m. on Nov. 6, a group of North Korean military officials, led by Lieutenant General Kim Young-chul, barged into the Kaesong Industrial Complex in North Korea without prior notice. Kim, who is also in charge of senior-level military talks with the South, instantly brought up an issue that has plagued inter-Korean ties for months.

“We know they [South Korea’s conservative civic groups] have sent 100,000 pira flyers yesterday,” he said in a stern voice, referring to the anti-regime leaflets that South Korean civic groups have been sending across the border to the North carried by large balloons. “They can’t do this. There will be consequences soon.”

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Excerpt:  A women’s group presented thousands of signatures Thursday petitioning Cuba’s parliament to close the gap in the communist country’s dual economy, which pays state workers in Cuban pesos but offers basics like toilet paper in another currency that few can afford.

Four women wearing white “With the Same Money” T-shirts gathered outside the legislature and attempted to turn in proof of 10,000 new signatures which they said complemented 10,837 signatures they gave lawmakers a year ago.

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Excerpt:  The deaths of four adults found in an east-end Toronto home on Wednesday were the result of a murder-suicide, according to police.

Two males and two females died as a result of a triple homicide that was followed by a suicide, Toronto Police Det. Sgt. Pauline Gray said at a press conference Thursday. A family dog was also found dead at the home on Welwyn Avenue.

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Excerpt:  Scores of Zimbabweans suffering from cholera are continuing to pour into South Africa at the Limpopo border town of Musina, where three people have already died after contracting the water-borne disease.

Health authorities in Limpopo are on high alert to prevent the cholera outbreak in neighbouring Zimbabwe — where about 290 people have died in recent weeks — from spreading.

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Excerpt:  The Vietnamese government, in an attempt to reduce the population increase rate, plans to propose an ordinance this December to limit married couples to having two children.

The 13th most crowded country in the world, with a population of around 84 million people, was initially expected to lessen the population increase rate by 0.3 percent this year.

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Excerpt:  The New Zealand Air Force resumed a search Friday for 29 fishermen whose burnt out Taiwanese boat was found floating near the Phoenix Islands in Kiribati nearly two weeks ago, officials said.

An air force Orion aircraft is planning to search a vast 54,000 square kilometer (21,000 square mile) expanse of the Pacific Ocean in search of the crew members, who include Taiwanese, Chinese, Indonesians and Filipinos.

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Excerpt:  A grenade attack on demonstrators occupying the Thai premier’s offices killed one person and wounded 29 on Thursday, prompting protest leaders to call for a new march against the government.

In the first fatal assault inside the Government House compound since the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) stormed it in August, unknown attackers fired the grenade into the compound before dawn on Thursday, Bangkok police said.

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Excerpt:  A spokesman for the Dutch Ministry of Finances said earlier today that Dutch authorities will grant Iceland up to 1.3bn euro, MBL reported. The condition for the loan is that the money is used for paying IceSave depositors.

According to Dow Jones, the loan is a part of the 5bn euro loan package that British, Dutch and German authorities will grant Iceland. The majority of foreign depositors in Icelandic savings accounts come from these three countries.

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Excerpt:  Prominent political analyst Abdul Razak Baginda has vouched that Malaysia’s Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak does not have any links with a murdered Mongolian model.

These were his first comments since he was acquitted and freed by a court three weeks ago.

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Excerpt:  Winter is closing in on Austria with a massive polar cold front crossing the country from the northwest.

The front’s proximity produced gale-force winds in the northern and eastern parts of the county on Wednesday and will bring snowfall in over the weekend.

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