WORLD BRIEFS

KYRGYZSTAN/Ethnic clashes kill 45

Mobs of armed men torched Uzbek neighborhoods in Kyrgyzstan on Friday in ethnic clashes that officials said left at least 45 people dead and 637 wounded in a Central Asian nation that hosts U.S. and Russian military bases. The rioting in Osh, the country's second-largest city, is the heaviest violence since former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was toppled in a bloody uprising in April. The unrest also spread to the capital, where armed mobs clashed with police and volunteer militia, according to witnesses. The intensity of the conflict, which pits ethnic Kyrgyz against minority Uzbeks, threw the fragile interim government's prospects for survival into doubt.

MEXICO/19 killed in rehab center

At least 30 gunmen burst into a drug rehabilitation center in a Mexican border state capital and opened fire, killing 19 men and wounding four people, police said. Gunmen also killed 20 people in another drug-plagued northern city. The killings marked one of the bloodiest weeks ever in Mexico and came just weeks after authorities discovered 55 bodies in an abandoned silver mine, presumably victims of the country's drug violence. The bullet-riddled bodies of 18 men and two women were found Friday in five different parts of Ciudad Madero, a city in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, where violence has surged this year amid a turf battle between the Gulf cartel and the Zetas gang of hit men.

CUBA/Cuts to free lunch

Nearly a quarter million Cuban workers are discovering there's so such thing as a free lunch. The government is dramatically expanding a program that shuts workplace cafeterias while giving people stipends to buy food on their own. It is part of a larger plan to chip away at the raft of daily subsidies that have characterized life on the island. The Communist Party newspaper Granma reported Friday that a pilot program begun in October to eliminate free lunches for 2,800 government workers will grow to include another 225,000 as of July 1. The move will save the cash-strapped country $27 million.