CENTRAL ASIA

SUSPECTED TALIBAN COMMANDER KILLED

KABUL, Afghanistan – The American-led coalition and Afghan forces have killed a suspected Taliban commander and three of his fighters in the country’s south, while six other rebels died in a clash with Afghan police, officials said yesterday.

Payenda Mohammed, who was thought to have led about 150 rebels, was killed in a battle in Kandahar province on Wednesday, said an American military spokesman, Colonel James Yonts. At least three other militants were killed and 15 wounded in the fighting, Colonel Yonts said yesterday. No Afghan or coalition troops were wounded.

– Associated Press

AFGHAN OPIUM PRODUCTION STRONG DESPITE CRACKDOWN

KABUL, Afghanistan – Bumper growing conditions meant that Afghanistan’s opium production remained almost unchanged this year even though a crackdown on poppy farming cut the land under cultivation by 21%, the U.N. anti-drug chief said yesterday.

Antonio Maria Costa warned it could take another 20 years to eradicate opium from the impoverished country. Opium production this year was 4,519 tons, just 2% down from the 4,630 tons in 2004, Mr. Costa said. He said Afghanistan is still estimated to produce 87% of the world’s supply of both opium and its derivative, heroin.

– Associated Press

WESTERN EUROPE

MERKEL BANKS ON CORPORATE ADVISERS

German chancellor candidate Angela Merkel will rely on former chief executives including Siemens’s Heinrich von Pierer to help frame economic policy after the September 18 election that all opinion polls predict her to win.

Ms. Merkel, 51, who met company executives including BASF’s Juergen Hambrecht and Mr. von Pierer’s successor, Klaus Kleinfeld, on Saturday to discuss economic-policy plans, will appoint the Siemens supervisory board chairman to lead a new advisory panel at a press conference in Berlin today at 10:15 a.m.

– Bloomberg News

POPE MEETS WITH HEAD OF LEFEBVRE MOVEMENT

VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI met yesterday with Bishop Bernard Fellay, the head of the ultraconservative schismatic movement founded by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the Society of St. Pius X. Both sides said they had agreed to take steps to resolve their differences.

Lefebvre founded the Switzerland-based society in 1969, opposed to the liberalizing reforms of the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council. He was excommunicated in 1988 after consecrating four bishops without Rome’s consent and died in 1991. All four, including Bishop Fellay, also were excommunicated. The society claims about 450 priests and 180 seminarians and has a presence in 26 countries.

– Associated Press

WOMAN DEFIES LAW BY WEARING BURQA

BRUSSELS, Belgium – A Moroccan woman living in a small town in Belgium has single-handedly triggered a national debate on multiculturalism after refusing to obey a municipal injunction to stop wearing a burqa.

The woman has now prompted politicians in the Dutch-speaking north of Belgium to talk about changing federal law, after she became the first person in Belgium to be fined for wearing the all-enveloping veil and robe. She has so far refused to pay the $145 fine, or to cooperate with authorities.

The woman’s husband, Khalid Bouloudo, 30, a pastry chef, was yesterday named in a Brussels court as one of 13 men accused of aiding and abetting terrorists linked to the Madrid train bombings in March last year.

The burqa, together with a smaller type of face mask, the niqab, has been banned by bylaw in the cities and towns of Ghent, Antwerp, Sint-Truden, Lebbeke, and Maaseik.

– The Daily Telegraph

NORTH AMERICA

IMMIGRATION HEARING SET FOR ACCUSED CUBAN TERRORIST

EL PASO, Texas – A judge set to hear testimony on whether an anti-Castro militant accused of orchestrating the deadly bombing of a Cuban jetliner should be deported has said he would consider whether the man ever helped commit terrorist acts.

Luis Posada Carriles’s hearing, expected to last a week, was set to begin yesterday afternoon.

Mr. Posada is being held at the center on charges that he sneaked into the country through Mexico in March. He was arrested in Miami in May. At issue in the hearing is whether the one-time CIA operative should be granted asylum in America despite requests by the government of Venezuela that he be deported to that country.

Mr. Posada has denied any involvement in the bombing.

– Associated Press