EAST ASIA

FIRST CHINA-U.S. DRUG INQUIRY NETS RECORD COCAINE SEIZURE

BEIJING – Chinese and American agents seized more than 300 pounds of cocaine smuggled from Colombia, authorities said yesterday – a record drug bust for China that underscores how South American narcotics gangs are aggressively moving into Asia.

Nine people were arrested. Chinese television footage showed a locker stacked high with dozens of bricks of smuggled cocaine, some with a yin yang symbol embossed on the solid white blocks.

The suspects include two Colombian citizens arrested in Hong Kong, along with suspects from Hong Kong and mainland China, a spokesman for the Customs General Administration of China, Liu Guangping, said.

“It’s pretty clear from this just how daunting a task we face,” Mr. Liu told reporters. He said it was by far the largest seizure of cocaine ever made in China.

– Associated Press

PERSIAN GULF

BOMBING IN NORTHWEST IRAQ KILLS 17, INCLUDING WOMEN, CHILDREN

At least 17 civilians, including women and children, were killed late yesterday by a suicide truck bombing in Tal Afar, a northwestern Iraqi city, according to President Talabani’s Kurdish political party.

At least 35 others, most of whom were women and children, were wounded after a white pickup truck carrying flour exploded about 8:30 p.m. in the city’s marketplace, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said on its Arabic-language Web site. The perpetrators have not been identified.

The violence came in a city that President Bush has cited as an example of progress in fighting rebels in Iraq.

Mr. Bush in March said his confidence in his Iraq strategy stemmed from the success that American and Iraqi personnel have had in Tal Afar, a city of about 290,000 people. The city was a staging ground for insurgents until America began an offensive in September that stabilized the city “block by block,” and allowed people to resume their daily lives, Mr. Bush said.

– Bloomberg News

SOUTH AMERICA

CHAVEZ TO DOUBLE TAXES ON FOREIGN OIL COMPANIES

Venezuela’s congress is set to approve a proposal to double the taxes of foreign oil companies, generating another $1.3 billion in revenue to help fund President Hugo’s Chavez aggressive anti-American foreign policy in the region.

The Venezuelan president announced during his weekly “Hello President” television show that he wanted to double taxes on oil, replacing the current 17% royalties charged on foreign companies with a 33% extraction tax.

“We are going to create a new oil tax, called the tax on extraction,” Mr. Chavez told viewers during his six-hour show. “The companies that are pumping oil in Venezuela are making a lot of money.”

– The Daily Telegraph