World Digest: Drug Cartel Suspect Seized in Mexico Church Raid

MEXICO

Drug Cartel Suspect Seized in Church Raid

Police raiding a church service in western Mexico arrested a man suspected of moving a half-ton of crystal methamphetamine into the United States each month, federal officials said Monday.

Authorities detained Miguel Angel Beraza, known as "the Truck," and another suspect after surrounding a church in Apatzingan, in Michoacan state, said Ramon Pequeno, head of the Federal Police's anti-drug unit. About 40 others at the Mass were brought in for questioning.

The acting administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Michele Leonhart, said Beraza is a high-ranking lieutenant in the drug cartel known as La Familia. She called his arrest the result of the "resolute partnership" between the United States and Mexico.

Beraza was in charge of La Familia's methamphetamine shipments to the United States, hiding the loads in fruit trucks, Pequeno said. Officials also seized $13,000, two assault rifles, several grenades and 130 cellphones.

-- Associated Press

AFGHANISTAN

Gates Meets With Top Commanders, Officials

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates held an unannounced meeting with his top commanders in Afghanistan at a U.S. air base in Belgium, the Pentagon said Monday.

The meeting Sunday at Chievres Air Base was arranged to give Gates an update on a review of the war being conducted by U.S. Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said.

In addition to McChrystal and Gates, a handful of other top U.S. military and defense officials attended the unusual meeting, Morrell said. He declined to discuss further details.

The officials discussed a possible troop increase in Afghanistan, ABC News reported, citing defense sources whom it did not identify.

-- Reuters

Scores Die in Sudan Attack: Armed tribesmen attacked a fishing village in southeast Sudan where hundreds of displaced people were camped near a river, leaving at least 185 people, most of them women and children, dead in the worst violence in three months, a southern Sudan official said. A flare-up of tribal clashes in south Sudan over cattle and territory has left more 1,000 people killed so far this year. The violence is separate from the conflict between rebels and government forces in Darfur, the vast western region of Sudan.

Jordan Rebuffs U.S. on Israel: Jordan on Monday joined Saudi Arabia in publicly rejecting U.S. appeals to improve relations with Israel to help restart Mideast peace talks. After talks with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh said confidence-building measures that the United States wants Arab states to take will not produce a resolution.

From News Services