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Xinhua world news summary at 0030 GMT, May 2

Xinhua, May 2, 2015 Adjust font size:

At least seven people were killed and 15 others injured during an outbreak of violence early Friday in parts of Mexico's western state of Jalisco, where local government launched an operation against a drug cartel.

At a press conference, Jalisco Governor Aristoteles Sandoval said the violence, including setting banks on fire, blocking roads, and burning cars and buses, was in reaction to the state's operations against regional drug traffickers. (Mexico-Violence)

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UNITED NATIONS -- A delegation from the UN Human Rights Office examined the criminal case against the former president of the Maldives, Mohammad Nasheed, who is serving a 13- year prison sentence, and found the trial "vastly unfair", deputy UN spokesman Farhan Haq said Friday at a daily news briefing here.

"The delegation found that however serious the allegations against him, the trial of Mr. Nasheed was vastly unfair and his conviction was arbitrary and disproportionate," said Haq. (UN-Maldives-Former president)

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WASHINGTON -- U.S. Navy ships have begun escorting U.S.-flagged commercial vessels traveling through the Strait of Hormuz, according to a statement of U.S. Defense Department on Friday.

The move is in response to increasingly provocative behavior by the Iranian navy in the strait within the last week, the DOD statement said. (U.S.-Navy-Iran)

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LISBON -- Thousands of people took to the street to protest austerity in Portugal on Friday, just months before the 2015 general elections to contest the center-right ruling government's austerity measures and mark International Labor Day.

People waved banners and chanted for the government to step down, and flower vendors sold carnations, symbolizing the flowers protesters placed in the military's guns during the carnation revolution in 1974, overthrowing a dictatorship. (Portugal-Protest) Endi