Mexico City: Alleged drug lord arrested after firefight

Reputed drug lord Osiel Cardenas, who once threatened U.S. drug agents at gunpoint to get out of his territory, was arrested Friday after a fierce firefight with Mexican soldiers.

Three soldiers were wounded, one of them seriously, in the morning shootout with Cardenas’ gunmen in Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas, said Defense Secretary Gen. Gerardo Vega Garcia.

The 35-year-old Cardenas, who had a $2 million bounty on his head, allegedly leads the Gulf of Mexico cartel and was the third major drug boss toppled in the last year, Vega said.

Cardenas is wanted by the FBI on organized crime, drug, money laundering and assaulting federal agents charges. Mexico has received a U.S. request for Cardenas’ extradition, but Vega said Cardenas “will face justice here in Mexico first” on drug, weapons and homicide charges.

Venezuela: Strike leader seeks asylum at embassy

A leader of a failed two-month strike to oust President Hugo Chavez was granted political asylum Friday by Costa Rica, the Costa Rican foreign ministry said.

Labor union leader Carlos Ortega, who faces treason charges, entered the embassy earlier Friday, Costa Rican Ambassador Ricardo Lisano said.

Ortega cited fear for his personal security when he requested asylum. He had been in hiding since Feb. 20, after a judge issued a warrant for his arrest for treason, rebellion and incitement.

Ortega, head of the country’s largest labor union, helped orchestrate a general strike to demand early elections or Chavez’s resignation. The strike, which petered out last month, paralyzed Venezuela’s lifeblood oil industry and cost the country $6 billion, according to government estimates.

Austria: U.S., Russian experts test ‘dirty bombs’

In New Mexico’s desert and Russia’s Ural Mountains, U.S. and Russian experts are experimenting with simulated “dirty bombs” to see how such radiation weapons and potential terrorist tools might work, officials of the two countries said.

It’s a sensitive area in which some information is withheld to keep clues to bomb-building out of terrorists’ hands. But American and Russian specialists attending a global conference in Vienna on dirty bombs disclosed some aspects of recent testing because, as a ranking U.S. official said, the public should know everything is being done to deal with the threat.

These so-called “RDDs,” for radiological dispersal devices, haven’t made an appearance yet, but the al-Qaida terrorist network, for one, is reported to have shown a serious interest in developing them.

India: Suspected militants take hostages at hotel

Suspected Islamic militants attacked a hotel Friday in Kashmir, taking nine people hostage, opening fire and throwing grenades at a crowded marketplace from an upper floor. Six people were killed and 15 injured.

The siege ended shortly after nightfall when soldiers stormed the Hotel Anand in the town of Punch, 135 miles northwest of Jammu. They found one gunman and three hostages dead, said Ashok Kumar Suri, police chief of India’s northern state of Jammu-Kashmir.

The other gunmen apparently escaped.

An unknown number of men had shot their way into the hotel using automatic weapons and tossed grenades out third-floor windows onto a crowd, including a parade of Shiite Muslims marking a religious holiday.

Police blamed the attack on Islamic separatists who have been fighting Indian security forces since 1989.