Bolivian blows self up in Congress

A "desperate" out-of-work miner blew himself up inside Bolivia's Congress on Tuesday, killing himself and two policemen, government officials said.
Ten others, all police and fire-fighters, were injured after 47-year-old Eustaquio Picachuri, protesting an unpaid pension and his unemployment, entered a side door to Congress and walked through a corridor before setting off the dynamite strapped to his body.
The incident came as President Carlos Mesa tries to ease tensions in Bolivia after October's deadly national revolt by farmers, workers and miners. Dozens of poor Indians died in the revolt that led to the ouster of President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada.
"It was a regrettable, isolated incident, without any political implications," Mesa told reporters. The president said the miner was "in an apparent state of desperation."
Mesa, who works in the nearby government palace in the historical centre of La Paz, had left the area 15 minutes earlier to watch a soccer match and was unharmed, officials told local media.