Mexico City—A surge in drug-related violence the last 24 hours has seen at least 40 people killed in the troubled northern border region and President Felipe Calderon’s home state. At least 18 people were killed and five wounded late Wednesday when gunmen stormed into a drug treatment center in northern Mexico’s violence-plagued Ciudad Juarez. Civil protection officials warned there might be more victims from the shootout. The city lies just across the border from El Paso, Texas, where feuding drug cartels are engaged in a violent struggle. In

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Cikangkareng—Rescue workers on Indonesia’s Java island searched by hand Thursday for dozens of people trapped by a major 7.0-magnitude earthquake that killed at least 49, officials said. Police and soldiers were called in to help find people buried in their homes by earthquake-triggered landslides in a village in Cianjur district south of the capital Jakarta in the wake of the quake, officials said. At least 40 people were trapped under rubble, dirt and boulders in Cikangkareng village while over 5,000 people had been displaced by the

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Washington—Israel must immediately ease its Gaza Strip blockade to allow in spare parts and building materials to repair the territory’s dilapidated sew-age and water networks, a top UN official said Thursday, warning of a growing environmental hazard. Some 13 to 21 million gallons of raw or partially treated waste are being pumped from Gaza into the Mediterranean every day for lack of treatment plants and storage pools, said Maxwell

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Dhaka—The Bangladeshi prime minister has ordered public servants to ditch suits and ties for short-sleeved shirts to cut air-conditioning use in the power-starved nation. Sheikh Hasina first raised the idea at a cabinet meeting last month and asked her colleagues to set an example to other government employ-ees. “She told us to avoid suits and ties on hot days and to wear plain, simple shirts,” said communications minister Syed Abul Hossain.

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Gwynne Dyer Comment

SOME years ago, a political science professor at a Japanese university told me that he reckoned you could fit everybody who counted in Japan into one room. There are about 400 of them, so it would have to be a ballroom. All but a couple would be men, of course — and at least half of them would be there because their fathers and grandfathers were in the same ballroom 25 and 50 years ago. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won a landslide victory in the election on Aug. 30, sweeping the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) out after an

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