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Coroner: Women in Cleveland home strangled

CLEVELAND, Oct. 31 (UPI) -- The six women whose bodies were found in a convicted rapist's home in Cleveland appear to have been strangled, the coroner said Saturday.

Cuyahoga County Coroner Frank Miller III said all six bodies showed signs of "homicidal violence," CNN reported. Miller said he could not determine yet how long the women had been dead.

Anthony Sowell, 50, was arrested Saturday morning, two days after police discovered the first bodies in his house. Officers went there Thursday with an arrest warrant stemming from an alleged rape a month ago.

Sowell was being held on the rape charge and had not been charged with homicide late Saturday, The Cleveland Plain Dealer said.

Allen Sowell said his younger brother rented the third floor of the house, which had belonged to their father and grandfather, from their stepmother when he was released from prison in 2005 after serving 15 years for rape. Allen said he has not seen his stepmother for months.

Police said two of the bodies were found on the third floor, one buried in the basement, two hidden in a crawl space and one buried in the yard.

Farm union leader, 14 others killed

SONORA, Mexico, Oct. 31 (UPI) -- Mexican authorities say Margarito Montes Parra, a high-profile farm-worker organizer, was gunned down in Sonora along with 14 family members and associates.

Prosecutors in the border state, which has been beset by drug-related violence, say they are looking into possible motives for the ambush, which occurred late Friday along a road to a rural hacienda in the southern part of the state.

Montes, his wife and two children were shot with high-caliber weapons along with 11 other family members and members of his staff. The Red Cross said three victims apparently survived the ambush.

Montes was the head of the General Popular Union of Workers and Farmers, an organization the Los Angeles Times said Saturday had led squatter protests and prodded the government for rural land reform. While Montes was reviled by major landowners, the newspaper said Mexican farm workers are also frequently pressured by drug traffickers to tend marijuana crops.

The killings sparked other activist groups to call on the Mexican government to aggressively investigate the ambush.

"This was an attack not just against a union leader but against the work we do," said Norma Patino, an official with COCYP, an umbrella group of peasant and popular organizations. "This hurts the work of all of us."

Israel wants immediate peace talks

JERUSALEM, Oct. 31 (UPI) -- Israel is willing to engage in peace talks with the Palestinians immediately but with no preconditions, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Saturday night.

Speaking at a joint news conference with U. S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said the Palestinian demand to impose preconditions for negotiations to resume does not help to advance peace negotiations.

"The Palestinian demand of preconditions is a change in policy never seen in 16 years," Netanyahu said in remarks broadcast live on Israel's Channel One television station. "The only way to reach an agreement is to start negotiating peace immediately."

Netanyahu referred to remarks made by Mahmoud Abbas earlier in the day, in which the Palestinian Authority president rejected the resumption of peace talks with Israel until a total West Bank settlement freeze is imposed.

"It is a fact the government under my leadership has agreed not to build new settlements and is prepared to adopt a policy of restraint on existing settlements that will allow for normal life to continue," the Israeli leader said.

Netanyahu said since he has taken office, hundreds of West Bank checkpoints have been dismantled and steps have been taken to boost the Palestinian economy.

Netanyahu also repeated his willingness to accept a two-state solution -- a demilitarized Palestinian state side by side with the state of Israel.

Clinton, for her part, backed Netanyahu, saying his comments concerning preconditions were "historically accurate." The secretary of state said she believed when Netanyahu has the chance to present his government's proposal in full, Israel's stand will be viewed as unprecedented.

She described her meeting with Abbas in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, as "effective and constructive."

Earlier in the evening, Clinton met with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. She concluded her whirlwind visit to Israel by meeting with Netanyahu and then departed for Morocco.

Obamas mark first Halloween in White House

WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 (UPI) -- With the White House bathed in orange lights and spiders and cobwebs hanging over the portico, the first family celebrated Halloween with about 2,600 people.

First lady Michelle Obama got into the spirit, wearing an orange-and-black leopard-look top and cat ears. President Obama dressed up as, well, a middle-age man -- in casual slacks and black sweater. Or maybe a president, celebrating his first Halloween at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Neither of the Obamas' daughters, Sasha and Malia, were spotted but reporters were told they were at the party. The president noted Sasha "doesn't like big furry things."

The Obamas -- along with Marian Robinson, the first lady's mother -- doled out White House M&Ms, sweet-dough butter cookies and dried fruit to about 2,000 children and 600 of their parents and wished all the trick-or-treaters a happy Halloween.

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, came as Darth Vader; U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, as Goofy.

Dancing musicians wore skeleton suits as they played. Red and yellow butterflies floated inside giant bubbles. Costumed "trees" on stilts walked the grounds. Scarecrows kept a watch on the festivities. Three giant pumpkins, each weighing about 1,000 pounds, dwarfed the hundreds of other pumpkins.

The children, most ages 6 to 14, came from schools in Washington, Maryland and Virginia.

Inside the White House, the first couple greeted a few hundred military families, chosen by each service.

"We are so grateful to you, especially those who are separated from family members," the president said.

He thanked White House staffers and their children, at which point his wife said, "They're so cute!"

"They're adorable," the president said, "as is, by the way, my wife -- a very nice-looking Catwoman."

Clinton finds Pakistani mistrust and anger

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 31 (UPI) -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's three-day trip to Pakistan did little to quell mistrust of the United States and anger over drone attacks, observers say.

Clinton met with journalists, college students and other Pakistani residents, in addition to the country's leaders. Many of those she encountered suggested, politely, that the bombing of suspected terrorist hideouts by unmanned aircraft is terrorism, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.

"You had one 9/11, and we are having daily 9/11s in Pakistan," Asma Shirazi, a journalist with Geo TV, said during a town hall meeting Friday in Islamabad.

When the moderator asked her if the drone attacks are the equivalent of terrorism, Clinton said no.

Some of those Clinton met blamed the United States for the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan, although they placed responsibility on the former administration of George W. Bush, not President Barack Obama.

One English-language newspaper, The Nation, called Clinton's visit an "abortive exercise," saying she left "fully conscious of that failure."