World in brief

Palestinian killed in West Bank melee

An Israeli border police officer shot and killed a Palestinian man and seriously wounded a teenage boy Friday during a demonstration against Israel’s installation of a barrier in the West Bank. Israel’s military said it was investigating the shooting in Nilin, near Ramallah, West Bank. Palestinian medical workers said Akel Srour, 28, was hit by a bullet in the chest and died at a hospital in Ramallah. Mohammed Atiyeh, 14, struck in the spine, was listed in serious condition at the hospital, they said.

Spacewalkers prepare station for new module

Two international space station crew members wrapped up a successful spacewalk Friday, the first since the size of the station’s crew expanded from three to six last month. The effort prepared the station for the addition of a new Russian module. Commander Gennady Padalka, a veteran Russian cosmonaut, and Flight Engineer Mike Barratt, a U.S. astronaut on his first space mission, installed a pair of antennae for automated rendezvous equipment during the 4-hour, 54-minute spacewalk. They also hooked up electrical connectors for the antennae and took photos of a manually operated crane.

Italian premier vows to tell truth in sex scandal

Premier Silvio Berlusconi said Friday he would resign immediately if he were shown to have lied about his relationship with an 18-year-old model at the heart of a scandal that has titillated Italy for weeks. His lawyer, meanwhile, moved to sue Spanish newspaper El Pais for having published photographs of topless women and a naked man lounging at the premier’s Sardinian home. The scandal involves Berlusconi and Naples model Noemi Letizia, whose 18th birthday party the premier attended several weeks ago. Berlusconi’s wife cited the premier’s attendance at the party in announcing she was divorcing the 72-year-old.

Peruvian police, Indians clash; deaths reported

Indians protesting oil and gas exploration on their lands battled police in Peru’s remote Amazon Friday, with authorities and Indian leaders reporting more than two dozen deaths. The violence broke out before dawn as officers tried to end a road blockade by some 5,000 Indians in an area called Curva del Diablo in the province of Utcubamba. Protest leaders said police opened fire from helicopters with bullets and tear gas, while national police director Jose Sanchez Farfan said Indians attacked officers with firearms.

Bosnian police officer charged in massacre

Bosnia’s war-crimes court says a former Bosnian Serb police officer accused of taking part in the killing of at least 1,000 Muslim Bosnian men from the town of Srebrenica will be tried for genocide. The Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina charged in a statement Friday that, as a member of a Bosnian Serb special police unit, Zeljko Ivankovic, 37, killed the victims in a warehouse into which Serbs had herded them, “with a view to entirely destroying a group of Bosniaks.”

Carradine’s death may have been an accident

The body of American actor David Carradine, best known for the 1970s TV series “Kung Fu,” was found in a Bangkok hotel room closet with a rope tied to his neck and genitals, and his death may have been caused by accidental suffocation, Thai police said Friday. The 72-year-old actor’s body was discovered Thursday in his luxury suite at Bangkok’s. No suicide note was found, and Carradine’s friends and associates insisted the actor would never have killed himself. Pornthip Rojanasunand, director of Thailand’s Central Institute of Forensic Science, said Carradine may have died attempting auto-erotic asphyxiation —- cutting off oxygen to the brain for sexual arousal.