LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY
“We are protesting mainly for our children,
because they’re not here - they are out looking for jobs.”
Emilio Martella,
one of 2,000 protesters in Rome during Wednesday demonstrations throughout Europe against government debt-cutting measures Article, 1AMexico seizes 30 Gulf cartel suspects
MEXICO CITY - Mexican marines captured 30 suspected Gulf cartel members and seized an arsenal of weapons during two days of raids in a northern border state torn by drug gang battles, officials announced Wednesday.
The arrests came as Mexico’s government said organized-crime-related killings have fallen so far in September compared with previous months. Government security spokesman Alejandro Poire said an average of 36 such killings were recorded in the first 24 days of September, compared with 49 killings a day in June and August.
In the state of Tamaulipas, marines conducted the raids in Matamoros and Reynosa, two cities across the border from Texas, Rear Adm. Jose Luis Vergara said.
The troops seized more than 50 guns, two shoulder-fired rocket launchers, 21 grenades and ammunition.
Drug-gang violence has claimed 28,000 lives since December 2006. In the latest violence, attackers threw an explosive at city hall in Matamoros early Wednesday, injuring three people, the federal attorney general’s office said.
Also on the border, two federal police officers were slain Wednesday at a downtown hotel in Ciudad Juarez, a city across from El Paso, Texas, that has become one of the world’s most violent places amid fighting among rival drug gangs.
Koreas end talks with no progress
SEOUL, South Korea - South Korea says its first working-level military talks with North Korea in two years have ended with no progress.
The Defense Ministry said today that South Korea pressed North Korea to apologize for the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship in March and to punish those responsible. Forty-six sailors died.
Pyongyang has denied involvement.
The ministry says North Korea responded that it cannot accept the result of an international investigation that found it was responsible for the sinking.
Officers from the two sides met in the truce village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone that divides the peninsula, the ministry said. They last held such talks in October 2008.
Meanwhile, North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Pak Kil Yon said Wednesday at the United Nations that Pyongyang would continue to expand its nuclear arsenal in order to deter what it perceives as American and South Korean aggression in the region.
Italians search for 2 U.S. balloonists
LONDON - Coast guardsmen are hunting for a pair of missing American balloonists last detected piloting their craft over the Adriatic Sea in rough weather, officials said Wednesday.
Richard Abruzzo and Carol Rymer Davis were participating in the 54th Gordon Bennett Gas Balloon Race, an annual race in which teams of balloonists try to see who can fly the farthest from a set point on a maximum of about 35,300 cubic feet of gas.
Italian coast guard said a search was under way for the balloon, one of 20 that set off Saturday from the English coastal city of Bristol. Spokesman Lt. Massimo Maccheroni said the last signal received from the balloon’s GPS was at 8 a.m. local time Wednesday. The signal showed the craft was 13 miles off the coast of the Gargano peninsula in the Adriatic Sea.
He said helicopters, military aircraft and three boats were taking part in the search. A ground search on the coast also was under way.
Berlusconi wins confidence vote
ROME - Premier Silvio Berlusconi won a confidence vote Wednesday night in the Chamber of Deputies by 67 votes.
Berlusconi had staked his coalition’s survival on the outcome of the vote in the lower chamber of Parliament. He amassed 342 votes in favor of his government compared with 275 votes against, with 3 abstentions.
Shaken by a break with one of his two main coalition partners over the summer, Berlusconi called the vote to confirm he could still command a comfortable majority in the legislature, which is halfway through its five-year term.
In his pitch to the Chamber of Deputies before the vote, he argued that Italy must be spared political instability at a time of financial woes.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 09/30/2010