In brief: India-flagged ship adrift

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – An India-flagged bulk cargo freighter with a failed engine was adrift Sunday in the North Pacific, being tossed about by stormy seas and fierce winds, the Coast Guard said.

The 28 crew members aboard the 740-foot APJ Suryavir, adrift about 540 miles southwest of Alaska’s Adak Island, planned to abandon ship and board a Samaritan freighter expected to arrive early today, the Coast Guard said.

There were no reports of injuries and the ship was not taking on water, according to the Coast Guard.

Body was drug lord’s

CULIACAN, Mexico – Genetic testing has confirmed that a man killed in a shootout last week with marines was drug cartel leader Arturo Beltran Leyva, the Mexican government said Sunday as a lavish but heavily guarded memorial service took place in this drug-plagued northern city.

Comparisons of DNA samples taken from the dead kingpin and from his imprisoned brother, Alfredo Beltran Leyva, show the two are related, the attorney general’s office said Sunday.

Astronauts blast off

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan – A Russian rocket blasted off from a cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and hurtled spaceward today, shuttling an American, a Russian and a Japanese to the International Space Station.

The Soyuz TMA-17’s three astronauts will take the station’s permanent crew to five following the launch, the first-ever blastoff of a Soyuz rocket on a winter night.

Timothy J. Creamer, Soichi Nohuchi and Oleg Kotov are to join the two current inhabitants, American Jeff Williams and Russian Maxim Surayev.

More detainees sent home

WASHINGTON – The U.S. has transferred a dozen Guantanamo detainees to Afghanistan, Yemen and the Somaliland region as the Obama administration continues to move captives out of the facility in Cuba in preparation for its closure.

The Justice Department said Sunday that a government task force had reviewed each case. Officials considered the potential threat and the government’s likelihood of success in court challenges to the detentions.