The world in brief

LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY

“The key to this, obviously, is China.And, unfortunately, China is not behaving as a responsible world power.”

John McCain,

the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who said China should do more to help

resolve the conflict between North and South Korea Article, 1A Okinawa reelects opponent of U.S. base

TOKYO - Okinawa’s governor, who was re-elected after campaigning for the removal of an unpopular U.S.

Marine base from the Japanese island, called on the entire country to work together to resolve the issue that has strained the U.S.-Japan security alliance.

“The U.S. military [stationed in Japan] is not only for Okinawa, but also for all of Japan,” Hirokazu Nakaima said in his victory speech late Sunday. “I want the entire country to join the effort to find a way to resolve Futenma’s relocation.”

Nakaima, 71, beat Yoichi Iha by less than 40,000 votes in a tight campaign in which the base relocation was a key issue.

The Marine Corps Air Station Futenma has been on Okinawa since 1945, and residents have long complained it produces aircraft noise and crime. A 2006 deal between the U.S. and Japan to move the base to a less crowded part of Okinawa has stalled because of public opposition.

Okinawa, home to about half of about 50,000 U.S.

troops stationed in Japan, is a strategically important island close to Taiwan and the Chinese mainland and not far from the Korean peninsula.

Hit-man boss arrested, Mexicans say

MEXICO CITY - A notorious drug gang leader has been captured and has confessed to ordering most killings in the battle-scarred border city of Ciudad Juarez since August 2009, including the drive-by shootings of a U.S.

consular employee and her husband, Mexico’s federal police said Sunday.

Arturo Gallegos Castrellon, 32, leader of the gang Los Aztecas, was arrested along with two other gang leaders in a Juarez neighborhood Saturday, said Luis Cardenas Palomino, chief of the regional security division of the federal police.

Cardenas said Gallegos claimed to have ordered 80 percent of the killings in the past 15 months.

Violence in Juarez has claimed more than 2,000 lives in the city this year.

Los Aztecas are a cross-border gang that carries out enforcement activities for the Juarez drug cartel, which has been fighting the Sinaloa cartel for control over the city, Mexican officials said.

Troops kill Iraqi mistaken for threat

BAGHDAD - U.S. troops who thought they were under attack killed an Iraqi airport employee Sunday as he drove near a military convoy on his way to work, officials said.

The driver, identified by colleagues as Baghdad International Airport worker Karim Obaid Bardan, failed to heed repeated signals to slow down or turn on his headlights as he neared the military convoy, said U.S. and Iraqi security officials.

“As a result, the vehicle was perceived as a threat and a decision was made to engage it with small-arms fire in order to stop it and to protect the convoy from a possible attack,” said Army Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.

An Iraqi policeman confirmed the driver did not stop or slow. Two other Iraqi officials said the pre-dawn shooting happened near a security checkpoint on the road to the airport and described the shooting as a mistake.

All three Iraqi officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

The shooting is under U.S. investigation, and Johnson said the military “deeply regrets” the driver’s death.

German: Calls spurred terrorism alert

BERLIN - Germany’s recent decision to declare a terrorism alert and dispatch heavily armed police around the nation was set off by phone calls from a man who said he wanted to quit working with terrorists and warned of a pending Bombay-style attack, according to a law-enforcement official with firsthand knowledge of the alert.

The caller, who claimed to have been a jihadist working with terrorists in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region, phoned the federal police three times providing what law-enforcement officials said was concrete information: plans for a team of armed terrorists to rampage through the Reichstag, the popular tourist site that also serves as the home for Germany’s parliament.

Even more alarming, the man said that there were already two members of the group in or near Berlin, and that four others would soon be trying to join them, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of his work in intelligence and security matters.