LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY
"I think that in some areas that the breadth
of the violence, the geographic spread of violence, is a little more than I would have gathered."
Gen. Stanley McChrystal,
the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan Article, 1AMexico arrests 5 in drug rehab slayings
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - Police have arrested five men accused of dozens of murders, including two mass killings at drug treatment centers in this northern Mexico border city.
Police say the men were members of the Sinaloa cartel, a violent gang entrenched in a brutal turf war for control of drug routes to the United States.
The men are accused of 45 slayings in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico's most violent city. They were arrested by law enforcement agents during a routine street patrol, according to a statement released Friday by federal police.
Police said the arrests solve two high-profile attacks. On Sept. 2, gunmen lined patients against a wall at a rehabilitation center in Ciudad Juarez and then riddled them with bullets, killing 18. Two weeks later, gunmen burst into another drug treatment center and killed 10 people.
Cuba to shut agencies' free cafeterias
HAVANA - The Cuban government plans to close free cafeterias in state ministries and instead give employees a stipend to buy food.
Under the program, designed to save money for Cuba's cash-strapped government, workers who ate free or for little cost in their government jobs instead will receive about 70 U.S. cents a day - a significant amount in a country where the average monthly salary is $19.
The pilot program announced Friday will start Thursday for the ministries of Work, Finance, Commerce and Economy. If successful, it will be extended nationwide, the Communist Party daily Granma said.
About 3 million state employees eat at government cafeterias daily, the paper said.
U.S. teen investigated in Somali blasts
NAIROBI, Kenya - FBI agents are investigating whether an American teenager detonated one of two stolen U.N.
vehicles packed with explosives at a peacekeepers base last week in Somalia, killing 21 people.
The investigation highlights a disturbing trend of Somali-American youths returning to their ancestral homeland to fight for an Islamic militia that the U.S. government links to al-Qaida.
Seattle-area blogger Abdirahman Warsame said that FBI agents in Seattle had visited the home of Mohamed Mohamud on Tuesday to investigate whether 18-year-old Omar, Mohamud's son, was involved in a twin suicide bombing in Mogadishu on Sept. 17. He spoke to Mohamud at a local mosque Thursday, two days after FBI agents visited.
Insurgents drove two stolen U.N. cars into an African Union peacekeeping base and detonated them. Twenty-one people were killed, including 17 Burundian and Ugandan peacekeepers. Markings on the cars meant they were not subject to the usual security checks.
Widower's U.N. speech honors Bhutto
UNITED NATIONS - Pakistan is beginning to claw its way out of the clutches of terrorists and religious extremists after decades of violence, President Asif Ali Zardari said Friday, with a portrait of his assassinated wife, Benazir Bhutto, by his side.
Zardari paid tribute to his late wife by delivering Pakistan's speech to the U.N. General Assembly with her color portrait set up next to him at the lectern.
Zardari said the military has been pushing forward to clear militants from Malakand, a Pakistani region where Islamic militants have been active. "In a short span of 10 weeks most of the internally dislocated have returned to their homes," he said.
"Pakistan has firmly responded to the challenges of extremism and militancy," Zardari said. "Democracy has given people ownership to the fight against terrorism."
Bhutto was killed in a gun-and-suicide bomb attack in 2007 as she campaigned to return her political party to power in parliamentary elections.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 09/26/2009