Wanted trafficker arrested in raid
One of the world’s most hunted drug traffickers – accused of shipping more than 70 tons of cocaine to the United States – has been arrested in Brazil, Colombian police said Wednesday.
Colombian-born Pablo Rayo Montano, who had been on the run for a decade, was captured Tuesday in Sao Paulo as part of an operation coordinated by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
More than three dozen others were arrested during simultaneous raids in the United States and Latin America, officials said. Authorities also seized control of three islands off the coast of Panama, a trove of artwork, yachts and millions in cash.
“It’s estimated the amount of cocaine supplied by this organization was enough to poison 37 million consumers,” Colombia’s anti-narcotics police said in a statement.
Rostov-on-Don, Russia
Top police official killed in bombing
A bomb killed a senior police official and six other people Wednesday in a volatile southern province bordering Chechnya, and five Russian soldiers were killed in a rebel ambush in Chechnya – attacks that highlighted escalating tensions in the region.
Dzhabrail Kostoyev, a deputy interior minister in the provincial government of Ingushetia, was killed along with his two bodyguards and four civilians by the bomb on a roadside on the outskirts of Nazran, the region’s biggest city, officials said.
Some officials initially said a suicide attacker had been in the car, but Russia’s Deputy Prosecutor General Nikolai Shepel later said the bomb apparently was detonated by remote control. He said investigators had found no human remains amid the wreckage, but discovered what appeared to be fragments of a remote control device.
Rome
Prodi sworn in as new premier
Center-left leader Romano Prodi was sworn in Wednesday as premier of Italy’s 61st postwar government, officially ending the conservative and sometimes rocky rule of Silvio Berlusconi.
Five weeks after his narrow election victory, Prodi submitted a Cabinet list to President Giorgio Napolitano that gave some indication of the new government’s priorities: fixing Italy’s ailing economy and focusing more on Europe.
Analysts do not expect relations with the United States to suffer.
New Foreign Minister Massimo D’Alema, a former Communist and former premier, opposed the U.S.-led war in Iraq – like all of Prodi’s coalition – and has criticized American foreign policies. But as Italy’s premier from 1998 to 2000, D’Alema supported the NATO-led airstrike against Yugoslavia and allowed the use of air bases on Italian soil.
In Washington, he is considered a reliable ally, said Franco Venturini, who writes for top Italian daily Corriere della Sera.