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Emanuel on the stump Chicago mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel speaks to his supporters as he arrives for his campaign at Welles Park in Chicago, Saturday.
AP PHOTO
KARACHI, Pakistan
Four-day airline strike ends
Employees of Pakistan’s state airline ended a four-day strike Friday that had crippled air travel in the country after the company’s director resigned and a route-sharing deal with another airline was scrapped.
The managing director of Pakistan International Airlines, Mohammad Aijaz Haroon, resigned late Friday, said Faisal Raza Abdi, an aide to Pakistan’s president.
The announcement of Haroon’s departure was met with cheers by strikers outside the airport in Karachi, where just a few hours earlier police had charged at striking employees with batons, beating some of them bloody.
Sohail Baloch, the head of the employees union, said they were calling off the strike as a result.
“Our prime demand has been met. We hope flight operations will resume after midnight,” Baloch said. “We apologize that passengers had to face troubles.”
SAN DIEGO
Taxi crashes into crowd
Police say a taxi cab driver plowed slowly into a crowd on a sidewalk in San Diego’s Gaslamp District, injuring several people.
The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that the incident occurred about 2 a.m. Saturday in the middle of San Diego’s popular restaurant and nightclub zone, close to the convention center.
The newspaper says 25 people were injured. Officials say all but two were taken to area hospitals. Their conditions were not available early Saturday.
One young woman reportedly was pinned against a wall by the cab and had her leg severed.
LOS ANGELES
Illness reported at Playboy
Los Angeles County health officials are investigating reports that dozens of people contracted respiratory illnesses after a fundraiser at the Playboy Mansion that was part of a larger conference held in Santa Monica.
The Department of Public Health issued a statement Saturday saying only that it was investigating a suspected respiratory infection outbreak among attendees of a conference on the west side of the county.
But the Los Angeles Times says the department sent an e-mail with a survey to all who attended the Feb. 3 event at the L.A. mansion, saying that they had received reports of problems including pneumonia.
Some 700 people from 30 countries attended the Santa Monica conference, called Domainfest global.
Representatives from Playboy and the conference did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
GUADALAJARA, Mexico
Attack kills 6, injures 37
Armed men opened fire and hurled a grenade into a crowded nightclub early Saturday, killing six people and wounding at least 37 in a western city whose former tranquility has been shattered by escalating battles among drug cartels.
The attack in Mexico’s second-largest municipality took place just hours after a shootout between soldiers and presumed cartel gunmen left eight people, including an innocent driver, dead in the northeastern city of Monterrey. Monterrey is Mexico’s third-largest city.
In the Guadalajara attack, assailants in a Jeep Cherokee and a taxi drove up to the Butter Club and sprayed it with bullets. Some of the men got out of the taxi and threw a grenade into the nightclub.