World Digest
Colombian drug-cartel leader held in Panama
PANAMA CITY, Panama — Panamanian police have captured a top Colombian drug kingpin believed responsible for "huge volumes" of narcotics entering the United States.
Arcangel de Jesus Henao Montoya was captured early Saturday in Torti, a city in southern Panama, police said yesterday. He is believed to be a top leader of the Norte de Valle drug cartel, which operates out of the city of Cali in southwestern Colombia.
U.S. officials said they will seek his extradition, but it was not known if Henao Montoya would first be sent to Colombia, which has a history of negotiating deals with drug kingpins not to extradite them to the U.S. The traffickers, including the late Pablo Escobar, were allowed to live in a luxurious Colombian prisons.
Weapons seized at home of war-crimes fugitive
PALE, Bosnia-Herzegovina — NATO-led peacekeepers confiscated weapons yesterday while searching the house of war-crimes fugitive Radovan Karadzic. There was no sign of Karadzic, but two men suspected of links to the former Bosnian Serb leader were detained.
The action was part of a search of the Bosnian Serb stronghold of Pale, about 10 miles east of Sarajevo, as peacekeepers hunted for Karadzic and former Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic.
Illegal immigrants froze to death on drifting boat
TIRANA, Albania — Most of the 21 illegal immigrants — 18 men and three women — who died overnight Friday trying to reach Italy froze to death in their rubber dinghy in the stormy Adriatic Sea, officials said yesterday. Eleven people survived, and a search was called off yesterday for seven other people thought to have been aboard.
The 40-foot inflatable powerboat ran adrift in high seas after its engine failed five miles off the Albanian coast. Their guide had called an Albanian television channel for help, bringing home to viewers the despairing cries from the ill-fated boat.
Survivors said several of the victims, who had paid $1,650 each to smugglers, died and slipped into the water just minutes before an Italian rescue boat arrived.
Bird flu outbreak in Japan kills thousands of chickens
TOKYO — Japan has confirmed an outbreak of highly contagious bird flu that has swept through Asia. About 6,000 chickens found dead on a farm in the western prefecture of Yamaguchi died of avian influenza, prefectural officials said today. Officials said this is the first case of the disease — which in rare cases can be deadly to humans — in Japan since the 1920s.
3 Chinese workers blamed for deadly gas-well leak
SHANGHAI, China — Police investigating a gas-well leak that killed 243 people in western China have arrested three oil-company workers on suspicion of dismantling safety features and mishandling drilling equipment, police and state media said today.
Two of those arrested, well technicians Wang Jiandong and Song Tao, are accused of removing the back-pressure regulator inside the drill, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Drill technician Xiang Yiming allegedly injected less than the required amount of drilling fluid into drilling tools, leading to the buildup of gas that eventually spewed from the well, Xinhua said.
The Dec. 23 accident spewed a deadly cloud of poisonous hydrogen sulfide over nearby villages in a poor, mountainous area. Villagers died in their sleep or were struck down while trying to flee.
More than 9,000 people were treated for injuries and 60,000 forced to evacuate the area. Hospitals last week reported 396 people still being treated for injuries, several of them in critical condition, according to Xinhua.
The well's owner, PetroChina, said last week it would offer compensation totaling $3.6 million to the injured and the survivors of those killed.
Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company
.......According to the Great Pumpkin, ".....You're in .....iHub....., Charlie Brown....."!!!
.......According to the Great Pumpkin, ".....You're in .....iHub....., Charlie Brown....."!!!
