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• Powell suggests Beijing set to free spy suspects
• Mount Etna erupts, officials keep close eye on peak
• Gunmen kill India's 'bandit' lawmaker
• Israeli missiles kill senior Hamas member
• One year later, families and friends gather to remember Concorde crash
• Indonesia's ousted president will leave for medical treatment
• Iceman was killed by arrowhead, scientists say

World briefs

Mob kills 8 suspected of robbery

GUATEMALA CITY -- A mob burned to death eight people in a remote region of northern Guatemala, accusing the victims of a series of highway robberies, police said Tuesday.

The violence occurred in the town of Secoyala, about 250 miles north of the capital, Guatemala City, police spokesman Faustino Sanchez said.

The mob captured a 17-year-old boy at the scene of one of the robberies Sunday morning and beat him until he provided names of his accomplices, said Ennio Rivera, Guatemala's police director.

Armed with the information, the mob captured eight people from nearby villages, tortured them and burned them to death late Sunday night and early Monday morning, Rivera said.

Nobody has been arrested in the killings.

Attorneys admit to helping fugitive

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Two Venezuelan attorneys said Tuesday they helped Vladimiro Montesinos during his flight from Peruvian justice last year.

Efrain Munoz and Gonzalo Garcia Mena said they paid for a private plane to take Montesinos from Costa Rica to the Caribbean island of Aruba in November. From there, Montesinos is known to have entered Venezuela in December. Munoz said Montesinos slipped away in Aruba on Dec. 6 -- and that he owed them a promised $60,000 for their help.

Montesinos was captured in Caracas on June 23 and deported to Peru, where he faces corruption, bribery, drug trafficking and other charges.

Former ambassador arrested in Spain

BOGOTÁ, Colombia -- Colombia's former ambassador to the European Union has been arrested in Spain for allegedly forming far-right militias that killed 20 peasants on his Colombian estate in 1996, officials here said Tuesday.

U.S.-born Carlos Arturo Marulanda was apprehended in Madrid carrying an American passport on Monday afternoon, ending a two-year hunt by Colombian and Interpol police.

Col. Gustavo Jaramillo, head of Colombia's secret police, said Colombia would request Marulanda's extradition, but added the process could take six months.

Marulanda, also a former development minister, was Colombia's ambassador to the European Union for five years.

Treaty needs U.S. support, Japan says

BONN, Germany -- Japan urged the United States on Tuesday to rethink its opposition to a treaty limiting emissions of greenhouse gases, saying much of the world is waiting for tough new standards to take effect.

"For all countries, participation of the United States is the best scenario," Japanese Environment Minister Yuriko Kawaguchi said as she arrived in Bonn for talks on the Kyoto pact, which would cut emissions of gases believed to be heating up the atmosphere.

President Bush abandoned the pact in March, saying it was flawed and would hurt the U.S. economy. Officials from some 180 nations are meeting in Bonn through next week to try to save it.

U.S. resident indicted on spy charges

BEIJING -- Gao Zhan, a permanent U.S. resident accused of spying for Taiwan, has been indicted and will probably stand trial later this month in Beijing, one of her lawyers said Tuesday.

Her indictment comes just days after her friend and fellow scholar, Li Shaomin, was convicted of spying in a related case and ordered deported from the country. Gao's fate is less certain than that of Li, however, because unlike Li, a naturalized American, she is a Chinese citizen.

The arrests of Li and Gao, as well as those of several other Chinese-born American citizens or permanent residents, have complicated U.S.-China relations at a time when both sides are eager to mend fences following the April collision of a U.S. spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet.

Mother charged with killing children

TORONTO -- Police filed first-degree murder charges Tuesday against a woman found lying semiconscious alongside the bodies of her two young children in the trunk of her car.

Jasotha Mahendran, 32, was being treated in a hospital and would be taken into custody when discharged, police Sgt. Robb Knapper said. Police were unable to provide a cause of death of 5-year-old Shiyami and 3-year-old Sageeve, pending an autopsy.

Mahendran had been distraught over the death of her husband in an industrial accident last year, relatives and neighbors said. The couple moved to Canada from Sri Lanka 10 years ago.

President names new prime minister

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Yugoslavia's president named a Montenegrin official Tuesday to become the new prime minister, moving to replace the federal government that collapsed in a dispute over Slobodan Milosevic's extradition to the U.N. war crimes tribunal.

The appointment of Dragisa Pesic, a member of Montenegro's Socialist People's Party, followed days of negotiations between President Vojislav Kostunica's pro-democracy coalition in Serbia and its partners in Montenegro, the smaller of Yugoslavia's two republics.

Border crossings to Congo closed

BANGUI, Central African Republic -- The Central African Republic closed its border crossings with Congo on Tuesday, apparently trying to stop the cross-border flow of arms and dissidents. Home Affairs Minister Theodore Bicko said the closing was until further notice.

Archbishop ordered to leave his wife

VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican on Tuesday threatened to excommunicate an archbishop married in New York this spring in one of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's mass weddings.

Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo was given until Aug. 20 to leave his wife, sever his ties with Moon's movement, publicly promise to remain celibate and "manifest his obedience to the Supreme Pontiff."