Honduras optimistic about finding solution

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras -- Showing new flexibility, Honduras' interim government on Tuesday backed the appointment of a high-profile mediator for negotiations and softened its stance on prosecuting a president ousted by a coup.

Roberto Micheletti, who took over following the June 28 coup that toppled President Manuel Zelaya and has resisted international pressure to reinstate him, applauded the announcement that Costa Rican President Oscar Arias has agreed to mediate efforts to end the standoff.

Arias "is a man with a lot of credibility in the world," Micheletti told HRN radio. "We are open to dialogue. We want to be heard."

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that Arias would take part after meeting privately in Washington with Zelaya, who was seized by Honduras' army and flown out of the country after the courts and Congress accused him of violating the constitution. Zelaya -- who flies to Costa Rica on Wednesday -- said he too has accepted Arias' appointment.

Mobs spread ethnic strife in western China

URUMQI, China -- Sobbing Muslim women scuffled with riot police, and Chinese men wielding steel pipes, meat cleavers and sticks rampaged through the streets Tuesday as ethnic tensions worsened in China's oil-rich Xinjiang territory, forcing officials to declare a curfew.

The new violence in Xinjiang's capital erupted only a few hours after the city's top officials told reporters the streets in Urumqi were returning to normal following a riot that killed 156 people Sunday. The officials also said more than 1,000 suspects had been rounded up since the spasm of attacks by Muslim Uighurs against Han Chinese, the ethnic majority.

The chaos returned when hundreds of young Han men seeking revenge began gathering on sidewalks with kitchen knives, clubs, shovels and wooden poles. They spent most of the afternoon marching through the streets, smashing windows of Muslim restaurants and trying to push past police cordons protecting minority neighborhoods. Riot police successfully fought them back with volleys of tear gas and a massive show of force.

At one point, the mob chased a boy who looked like he was a Uighur. The youth, who appeared to be about 12, climbed a tree, and the crowd tried to whack his legs with their sticks as the terrified boy cried. He was eventually allowed to leave unharmed as the rioters ran off to focus on another target.

Pope proposes new financial order guided by ethics

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Benedict XVI called Tuesday for a new world financial order guided by ethics and the search for the common good, denouncing the profit-at-all-cost mentality blamed for bringing about the global financial meltdown.

In the third encyclical of his pontificate, Benedict pressed for reform of the United Nations and international economic and financial institutions to give poorer countries more of a say in international policy.

"There is urgent need [for] a true world political authority" that can manage the global economy, guarantee the environment is protected, ensure world peace and bring about food security for the poor, he wrote.

The document "Charity in Truth," was in the works for two years, and its publication was repeatedly delayed to incorporate the fallout from the crisis. It was released a day before leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized nations meet to coordinate efforts to deal with the global meltdown, signaling a clear Vatican bid to prod leaders for a financially responsible future and what it considers a more socially just society.

"The economy needs ethics in order to function correctly -- not any ethics, but an ethics which is people centered," Benedict wrote.