Mexico

Federal official arrested in drug war

Moving to halt a bloody drug war in this popular beach resort, a top Mexican investigator arrested a key federal official and several others Wednesday as part of a probe into the killings of nine people, including three federal agents.

The arrests came after security forces surrounded the federal attorney general’s office here and interrogated those inside. Lead investigator Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos said everyone who worked in the office was under suspicion of having links to drug traffickers.

Miguel Angel Hernandez, who headed the Cancun federal attorney’s office, and local police official Felipe de Jesus Arguelles were among a group of suspects flown to Mexico City late Wednesday night, Atty. Gen. Rafael Macedo de la Concha said at a news conference.

Philippines

Death toll from floods, landslides rises to 412

The death toll from a powerful rainstorm that triggered landslides and flash floods in the eastern Philippines rose to 412, with 177 people still missing, officials said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, winds and rain from another approaching typhoon hampered rescue efforts and prompted authorities to raise an alert over the country’s already battered eastern provinces.

Local Government Secretary Angelo Reyes told disaster officials in Manila that police had reported 412 dead, 63 injured and 177 missing.

As rescue workers worked to reach survivors on rooftops and dry patches of land, the coast guard prevented ferries, small boats and fishermen from leaving ports after authorities raised a typhoon alert over provinces facing the Pacific Ocean.

United Nations

Policy changes sought on pre-emptive attacks

A high-level panel called for sweeping reform of the United Nations in the wake of bitter divisions over the U.S.-led war in Iraq, with proposals to expand the Security Council and to give the powerful body clear guidelines for authorizing preventive military attacks.

The panel’s long-awaited report, which was commissioned by Secretary-General Kofi Annan after last year’s diplomatic battle over Iraq, said the dangers confronting the world today could not be dealt with by any nation acting alone, even a superpower.

The 95-page report laid out a new vision for collective action to tackle threats to global security and to make the Security Council “more proactive.”

“Today’s threats recognize no national boundaries, are connected, and must be addressed at the global and regional as well as the national levels,” the panel said.

Congo

Rwandan troop invasion reported

U.N. observers encountered what they believed to be about 100 Rwandan troops in eastern Congo, a U.N. official said Wednesday, marking the first reported U.N. sightings since Rwanda threatened to send in its forces against Rwanda Hutu rebels sheltering here.

The suspected Rwandan forces withdrew toward Rwanda after Tuesday’s encounter, said M’hand Ladjouzi, head of the U.N. mission at Goma. He spoke at a news conference in Goma, the largest city of the east.

A Rwandan diplomat denied Rwanda had invaded again, after a week of warnings that raised fears of a return to the six-nation war that devastated Congo, Africa’s third-largest nation.