World News

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(MOMBASA, Kenya) -- Local police in the coastal city of Mombasa say the latest grenade attack in the country since it sent troops into Somalia last year killed one and injured three others Tuesday night at a restaurant and sports bar. Kenya’s Daily Nation reports there were warnings in the last few months that the Bella Vista restaurant would be targeted.  A witness said the attackers in two cars opened fire first in the parking lot before lobbing three grenades toward the entrance of the building, killing a security guard.

Kenya police blame Somalia’s Al Shabab insurgents and sympathizers for the series of grenade attacks in Nairobi, Mombasa, and near the border with Somalia since last October.  Al Shabab has vowed reprisal attacks on Kenya.  Most of the attacks have been targeted at local Kenyans, though the U.S. Embassy recently warned of a possible attack on hotels or government buildings in Nairobi.

Also Tuesday, at the Dadaab refugee camp near the border with Somalia, a police officer was killed while escorting aid workers when his car was hit by an improvised bomb.  Security challenges in Dadaab are making it difficult for aid organizations working at the world’s largest refugee camp that most people now associate with last year’s famine in the Horn of Africa.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- As President George W. Bush quietly returned to Washington Tuesday, he brought along a slew of global democracy activists known mostly for never being quiet.

Tuesday’s lineup at the George W. Bush Presidential Center-sponsored event, “A Celebration of Human Freedom,” included Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian activist living in Washington; Bob Fu, a native Chinese pastor; and Normando Hernandez, a former political prisoner in Cuba.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the democracy activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, joined the conference via Skype from her living room in Myanmar, formerly Burma.

“These are extraordinary times in the history of freedom,” Bush said. “In the Arab Spring, we have seen the broadest challenge to authoritarian rule since the collapse of Soviet communism. Great change has come to a region where many thought it impossible. The idea that Arab people are somehow content with oppression has been discredited forever.”

“America does not get to choose if a freedom revolution should begin or end in the Middle East, or elsewhere. It only gets to choose what side it is on,” he added.

Abdulhamid, founder of the Tharwa Foundation and one of the earliest dissident voices behind the Syrian uprising, introduced Bush Tuesday, emphasizing the importance of fearless activism.

“The price of activism could be the death of the human body. But the price of silence could result in the death of human spirit, a far greater price to pay,” Abdulhamid said.

“All of us here today join you in hoping and praying for the end of violence and the advance of freedom in Syria,” Bush told Abdulhamid as he took the stage.

When Suu Kyi appeared on the big screen above the stage, she too offered her support to Abdulhamid’s home country.

“I would like to say to the people of Syria, we are with you in your struggle for freedom,” she said.

Asked if she had a solution to the violence in Syria that has claimed more than 12,000 lives in the last 15 months, Suu Kyi replied, “If there was an easy answer, I think Syria would be at peace now.”

But Suu Kyi said she’s hopeful about peace abroad and at home.

Last month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States would begin to ease sanctions in Myanmar, and on Monday, Sen. John McCain advocated for the suspension of sanctions, echoing the recent move by the European Union.

“I am not against the suspension of sanctions, as long as the people of the United States feel that this is the right thing to do at the moment,” Suu Kyi said Tuesday.

“I do advocate caution, though,” she said. “I sometimes feel that people are too optimistic about what we are seeing in Burma. You have to remember that the change in Burma is not irreversible.”

And there is reason for optimism. Suu Kyi was sworn in on May 2 as a member of parliament and will soon make her first trip abroad in more than two decades, to London and then Oslo, Norway, to finally accept her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.

In one final word, Suu Kyi offered advice to her fellow activists: “Persevere. You’ll get there in the end. Don’t lose hope. There are many people who are with you in mind and in spirit.”

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images (MEXICO CITY) -- Carlos Fuentes, the Mexican writer whose powerful mix of deep political and social commitment with bold stylistic innovation made him among the most prominent figures in Latin American writing in the 1960s and ’70s, has died in a Mexico City hospital. He was 83.

He may be best known in the United States for his 1985 novel The Old Gringo, about the disappearance of the American writer Ambrose Bierce in Mexico during the revolution. The book became a U.S. bestseller and was made into a movie starring Gregory Peck and Jane Fonda. But it was with his earlier novels that Fuentes made his most profound mark on world literature.

Though he was perennial contender for the Nobel Prize, he never won. He still received worldwide recognition for his work. Terra Nostra received the Venezuelan Romulo Gallegos Prize; in 1987 he won the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world’s highest literary honor.  In 1994 Spain gave him a Prince of Asturias Award for literature. In 1997 he was named a commander of the National Order of Merit, France’s highest civilian award given to a foreigner.

He also received the Four Freedom Awards for Freedom of Speech and Expression in 2006, in Middelburg, the Netherlands.

He taught courses at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania and Brown, and twice served as Mexican ambassador, first to England and then to France. He resigned both posts in protests related to the 1968 slaughter of Mexican students.

Fuentes was born in Panama City on Dec. 11, 1928 to Mexican parents. His parents were both diplomats, so Fuentes moved frequently in his early years, living in Montevideo, Uruguay; Rio de Janeiro; Washington, D.C.; Santiago, Chile; and Buenos Aires, Argentina. He later divided his time between homes in Mexico City and London, where he did most of his writing.

He married actress Rita Macedo in 1959, and the couple had a daughter, but they divorced in 1973. Fuentes was romantically linked to the actresses Jeanne Moreau and Jean Seberg.

Fuentes later married journalist Silvia Lemus and they had two children together. Their son Carlos Fuentes Lemus died from complications associated with hemophilia in 1999, and Natasha Fuentes Lemus died in 2005 after a cardiac arrest.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio