World briefs 5/3

Islamic militants blamed for 31 killed in Algeria

ALGIERS, Algeria -- Alleged Islamic militants killed 31 people and wounded five others in two separate attacks, the official Algerian news service reported Thursday.

The attacks occurred late Wednesday in the Tiaret region, about 210 miles west of the North African nation's capital, the APS news agency said. The Armed Islamic Group, Algeria's most radical insurgency movement, is active in the area, though there was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Assailants killed 20 people and wounded five others in an attack in Ksar-Chellala, a town just outside Tiaret. Another attack left 11 dead in the town itself.

More than 120,000 people have died in Algeria's Islamic insurgency, which broke out in 1992 when the army canceled elections that a fundamentalist party was expected to win.

Bee truck crash forces evacuation in Mexico

MEXICO CITY -- A truck carrying 650 beehives crashed in northern Mexico, and the angry insects escaped, forcing officials to evacuate scores of nearby residents and set up roadblocks to warn motorists.

The truck overturned on a curve about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday in Santa Lucia, about 180 miles southeast of Presidio, Texas.

Eighty residents of Santa Lucia were told to leave, and police set up checkpoints to urge approaching drivers to close their windows and to drive slowly so as not to anger the bees further, the newspaper Diario de Chihuahua reported Thursday.

Twenty beekeepers, including students from a local agricultural school, were called to help rebuild hives and lure some of the bees back into captivity.

Thousands of other bees -- including a swarm that gathered around a tow-truck crane -- were killed.

Research shows safety of Crohn's disease drug

LONDON -- When Crohn's disease is hard to treat, patients are more likely to achieve long-term remission if they get regular infusions of the drug Remicade, new research confirms.

Doctors usually give people with moderate or severe forms of the bowel ailment a single infusion of the anti-swelling drug to treat acute attacks, but the effect wears off after a while.

Remicade, the first drug approved specifically for Crohn's disease, has not been recommended for ongoing use, but experts say research published this week in The Lancet medical journal provides evidence that it is safe and effective enough to keep taking Remicade, generically known as infliximab.

Two killed in fall from window were wrestling

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- A college student and a man he was wrestling with died early Thursday after they fell out a third-story window at a University of Kentucky dormitory, a school spokeswoman said.

Jeffrey Pfetzer, 19, a University of Kentucky freshman, was pronounced dead at the scene. Matthew Rzepka, 22, of Bowling Green, who was visiting his brother at the 23-story Kirwan Tower, died later at the University of Kentucky Hospital.

"The two males were apparently wrestling in an open area of the third floor of the dormitory," spokeswoman Mary Margaret Colliver said. "They smacked against a plate glass window, the window gave out and the two fell three stories to the ground."

Unitrin to pay millions to black customers

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- Life insurance provider Unitrin Inc. will pay $27 million to clients overcharged because they were black, according to a settlement reached Thursday in a class-action lawsuit.

The money will go to about 467,000 people who held policies sold from the Depression era through 1970. Insurance companies during that time often charged black customers more than whites on the grounds they were perceived to have a shorter life span and higher insurance risk.

Unitrin officials said the settlement will reimburse blacks who unfairly spent more money for the same insurance coverage.

-- From wire reports