Kidnapings

The bullet-riddled body of an Iraqi newspaper reporter was recovered Tuesday in Baghdad, and police in the southern city of Basra began an intensive search for a Western journalist working for CBS News and his Iraqi interpreter. Journalists have been frequent targets in Iraq, which the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said remained the world's most deadly country for media workers despite recent security gains.

An Iraqi interpreter for CBS News kidnapped in Basra was freed Wednesday, but a British journalist remained in captivity, police said. Aqeel Khadhir was handed over to authorities at the hotel where he was seized in Basra, 275 miles south of Baghdad, Police Brig. Gen. Shamkhi Jassim said. Journalists at the hotel saw police officers escort the Iraqi interpreter to headquarters.

The body of an Ontario man who was beaten and then kidnapped from his home was uncovered in the San Bernardino Mountains on Saturday, five days after he disappeared, authorities said Monday. Santiago Contreras, 33, had been shot to death and was found on a mountain slope near California 138 in the Valley of Enchantment, but it was unclear when he was shot, according to Ontario Police Det. Jeff Higbee.

Gunmen kidnapped a Chaldean Catholic archbishop and killed three of his guards Friday in the latest attack targeting Iraq's dwindling Christian minority in this northern city. The armed group intercepted Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho as he left the Church of the Holy Spirit after celebrating Mass, said Iraqi Brig. Gen. Khalid Abdul Sattar, a spokesman for Nineveh province security forces.

Gunmen fired on a car carrying United Nations aid workers and abducted a Briton and a Kenyan in southern Somalia, officials and witnesses said. The Briton may have been wounded in the leg. The workers' employer, the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, was unavailable to confirm the incident or the nationalities of the hostages.

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and French First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy joined several thousand marchers who rallied in Paris to demand freedom for kidnapped Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt. Betancourt, a French-Colombian citizen, was taken hostage by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in 2002 while campaigning for Colombia's presidency. Similar demonstrations were organized in about 10 other French cities.

Pakistan's ambassador to Afghanistan appeared on a video aired Saturday by an Arab satellite channel, saying he was kidnapped by Taliban militants more than two months ago. Ambassador Tariq Azizuddin, flanked by his driver and his bodyguard, was shown sitting on the ground amid green brush in front of three masked men wearing traditional robes and holding automatic weapons. "For 27 days, we have lived comfortably. . . .

By his own confession, Austrian police say, Josef Fritzl held his daughter inside a hidden, windowless cellar for nearly a quarter of a century, raping her repeatedly and forcing her to give birth to seven of his children. When two of the children were freed this week, authorities said they were seeing sunlight for the first time.

Police said two children who were abducted by their father over the weekend in Sunland were found in Mexico on Tuesday morning. LAPD Sgt. Rudy Alaniz of the Foothill Division said the two boys, Diego Ortega, 5, and his brother, Luis, 3, were unharmed and in good condition. Alaniz said their father, Jose Luis Ortega, 27, was still at large. He is also wanted in the shooting of his estranged wife. Diego and Luis were abducted Sunday afternoon. They were being dropped off at Ortega's home in the 10400 block of McBroom Street for Father's Day. The parents started arguing, then Ortega shot his wife multiple times, police say. Ortega then fled with the two boys in his black 1998 Ford Ranger.

Eight people were arrested on suspicion of kidnapping a 24-year-old man after SWAT officers and detectives made a high-risk rescue Tuesday afternoon at a Reseda home, police said. Members of the Los Angeles Police Department's Robbery-Homicide Division had the house in the 18300 block of Schoolcraft Street under surveillance after an attempt to deliver a ransom to the kidnappers failed.