In brief: China sends high-ranking official to Taiwan to restore ties

TAIPEI, Taiwan – China has sent its first ever ministerial-level official to Taiwan for four days of meetings to rebuild ties with the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own, after mass protests in Taipei set back relations earlier this year.

Zhang Zhijun, minister of Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office, reached the island’s main airport just before noon today to speak privately with his government counterpart about cutting import tariffs and establishing consular-style offices helpful to investors and tourists.

China and Taiwan have been separately ruled since the Chinese civil war of the 1940s.

Mexico arrests Tijuana cartel leader

MEXICO CITY – The head of the once-mighty Tijuana-based Arellano Felix drug cartel was arrested at a home while watching the telecast of Mexico’s soccer team playing in the World Cup, federal officials said Tuesday.

Federal police chief Monte Alejandro Rubido said Fernando Sanchez Arellano was detained in the border city of Tijuana on Monday.

Sanchez Arellano had $100,000 in cash when he was arrested, Rubido said.

Plane passenger dead after gunshots

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Authorities in Pakistan were looking for a gunman who opened fire at a plane Tuesday evening just as it was landing in the volatile northwest, killing one person and wounding two others, officials said, casting fresh doubts about security at the country’s airports.

A female passenger on board the plane died on the way to the hospital, said Mashood Tajwar, a spokesman for the national carrier, Pakistan International Airlines.

Two other people on the flight were also wounded, said Dost Muhammad Khan, the station house officer in charge of the area. The plane was coming from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Sudanese woman rearrested at airport

JOHANNESBURG – A Christian woman in Sudan freed from death row Monday has been rearrested a day later after trying to leave the country with her family, according to reports from Khartoum, Sudan.

Meriam Yehya Ibrahim, 27, sentenced to hang last month for apostasy, was released after her conviction was overturned by Khartoum’s appeals court. But Ibrahim, her husband and two children were detained by security at the Khartoum airport where they sought to board a plane, Reuters reported, citing a security official. The reasons for her rearrest were unclear.