Kansas City, Mo.: 38 charged in drug ring

Federal prosecutors have charged 38 people from Kansas and Missouri with conspiracy to smuggle a massive amount of cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana from Mexico into the United States and distribute the drugs in the Kansas City area.

U.S. Atty. Todd Graves said late Monday the charges were filed as part of a national operation that involves 135 defendants in several states and Mexico. Graves said that since 1997, a Mexican drug cartel has supplied hundreds of pounds of drugs worth millions of dollars to customers in several states, including Kansas and Missouri.

Graves said many of the conspirators operated or worked for automotive businesses such as tow services, junkyards, car washes and maintenance facilities.

Washington, D.C.: 4 nations may have smallpox

A Bush administration intelligence review has concluded that four nations including Iraq and North Korea possess covert stocks of the smallpox pathogen, according to two officials who received classified briefings.

Records and operations manuals captured this year in Afghanistan and elsewhere, they said, also disclosed that Osama bin Laden devoted money and personnel to pursue smallpox, among other biological weapons.

Smallpox, which spreads by respiration and kills roughly one in three of those infected, took hundreds of millions of lives during a recorded history dating to Pharaonic Egypt.

The last naturally occurring case was in 1978, and the disease was declared eradicated on May 8, 1980. All but two countries the United States and the Soviet Union reported by Dec. 9, 1983, that they no longer possessed the virus.

Israel: Suicide bomber kills two; Sharon government survives

A Palestinian suicide attacker blew himself up Monday while grappling with an Israeli security guard at a shopping mall in a Tel Aviv suburb, killing the guard and another civilian and wounding 12 other people, including two infants.

Against the backdrop of violence, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government fended off three no-confidence votes.

Sharon rejected calls for early elections and was searching for partners to stabilize his coalition. Sharon lost his majority last week when the moderate Labor Party quit.