TIMERGARAH, Pakistan

Police claim girl, 9, escapes after donning suicide vest

Police said Monday that militants kidnapped a girl on her way to school and forced her to wear a suicide bomb vest. The girl and police said she escaped her captors as they directed her to attack a paramilitary checkpoint in northwest Pakistan.

Sohana Jawed, 9, who is in third grade, said she was abducted near her home in the northwestern city of Peshawar on Saturday and taken to Lower Dir district, a four-hour drive, where she was found Monday.

Police in Lower Dir presented Jawed at a news conference, where she told her story. But police in Peshawar said they haven’t received a report of a missing girl and haven’t identified a resident with her name.

Initial police reports of Pakistani security incidents are sometimes wrong..

VERACRUZ, Mexico

Journalist, wife and son gunned down at their home

A journalist, his wife and their 21-year-old son were shot to death inside their home in this Gulf coast city Monday, authorities said.

Journalist Miguel Angel Lopez Velasco wrote a column about politics and crime and was editorial director for the daily newspaper Notiver, where his son had been working as a photographer.

Veracruz state prosecutor Jorge Yunis said investigators haven’t determined a motive in the killings, and no one has been arrested.

Press freedom groups say that Mexico is the most dangerous country in the Americas for journalists. More than 60 reporters have been killed in Mexico since 2000, according to the National Human Rights Commission.

CAIRO

Mubarak fighting cancer, defense lawyer suggests

Ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was treated last year for cancer in his gallbladder and pancreas, and may be suffering a recurrence that spread to his stomach, his defense lawyer said Monday.

However, two senior Egyptian medical officials – one of them the head of Mubarak’s team of doctors – said he does not have the disease.

Mubarak, 83, has been hospitalized since early April. He is set to face trial in August on charges he ordered the killings of protesters during the 18-day uprising that ousted him Feb. 11.

A conviction could carry the death penalty, and activists suspect he may be using health problems as a ruse to sway public opinion.