UGANDA
President deplores leniency for protesters
KAMPALA — President Yoweri Museveni on Tuesday blamed courts and police for being lenient with opposition groups protesting the rising cost of living, despite a crackdown on the demonstrators.
Last month, opposition chief Kizza Besigye launched “walk-to-work” protests against high food and fuel prices. Police beat him up, forcing him to seek treatment in neighboring Kenya.
“Weaknesses in the existing laws, too much laxity by the elements of the judiciary and the police allow all this indiscipline and criminality to persist,” said Mr. Museveni, who has ruled Uganda for 25 years.
MEXICO
Police detain record number of illegals
TUXTLA GUTIERREZ — Police on Tuesday detained 513 illegal migrants who were crammed into two trucks bound for the United States, prosecutors in southeast Mexico said.
In the highest detention on record in Mexico, immigrants from Latin America, Japan, China, India and Nepal “were traveling in inhuman conditions” in southeastern Chiapas state, near the Guatemalan border.
UNITED KINGDOM
House of Lords could adopt direct elections
LONDON — Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg introduced a bill Tuesday to reform the country’s ancient House of Lords, including the first direct elections for members.
The 700-year-old upper chamber, which has the power only to amend legislation, currently has 792 active members in a mix of appointed, hereditary and religious peers. The members are appointed for life.
The bill outlined how the chamber can be slimmed to 300 members, with 80 percent elected and each member serving fixed 15-year terms. The other 20 percent would be appointed.
SLOVAKIA
Police find two bodies in Slovak cannibal case
BRATISLAVA — Information from a computer that belonged to a suspected cannibal led police to a grave containing the remains of two women, Slovakia’s top police official said Tuesday.
Jaroslav Spisiak said the women’s remains were in a shallow grave found in the woods near the eastern town of Kysak. The bodies had been cut into pieces, he said.
The 43-year-old man suspected of being a cannibal was critically wounded last week in a gunbattle during an undercover police operation to apprehend him.
Police believe the man used the Internet to search for a person who wanted to commit suicide and would agree to let him eat the body.
A Swiss citizen initially agreed but later changed his mind and informed authorities.
DENMARK
Claim set for North Pole, shipping routes, fish, oil
COPENHAGEN — Denmark plans to lay claim to the North Pole and other areas in the Arctic, where melting ice is uncovering new shipping routes, fishing grounds and drilling opportunities for oil and gas, a leaked government document showed Tuesday.
The draft document said Denmark’s Science Ministry has started collecting data to formally submit a claim for those areas to the United Nations no later than 2014.
Russia, Norway, Canada and the United States have their own claims on the a region believed to hold as much as 25 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas.
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