Mexico's powerful drug cartels are buying cocaine directly from Colombia's main guerilla group, Colombian deputy defense minister Sergio Jaramillo charged Oct. 7 at an OAS anti-crime conference in Mexico City. Jaramillo said that Oliver Solarte, finance chief of the FARC's 48th Front, is the guerilla organization's key contact with the Mexican drug lords. "We are particularly worried about the strengthening connections between Mexican cartels and the FARC," Jaramillo said. "The Mexican cartels are buying directly from the FARC." He declined to provide more details, saying he did not want to compromise intelligence reports. (AP, Oct. 10)

Bernardino Terracciano, the Naples man who played himself in the award-winning film Gomorra about the Neapolitan mob is among seven men arrested Oct. 12 on organized crime charges. Terracciano—the burly, menacing local boss "Zi' Bernardino" (Uncle Bernardino) in Matteo Garrone's film—is accused of extortion and criminal association, police said. Gomorra, which uses local people from Naples' dangerous suburbs as well as actors, won second place at the Cannes Film Festival this year and is Italy's entry for best foreign-language film at the forthcoming Oscars. It is based on an expose of the Camorra by the Naples based writer Roberto Saviano, who is under police protection.

Georgia has formally protested the continuing presence of Russian troops in South Ossetia's Akhalgori district and Abkhazia's Kodori Gorge, both areas held by Georgian forces until the August war. Under the ceasefire terms, Russia is to withdraw to positions it held before the fighting broke out, but Moscow and Tbilisi are at odds as to whether this includes territories within the breakaway enclaves. "Akhalgori is within South Ossetia's borders, so the [ceasefire] plan does not cover it," Russian news agencies quoted Moscow's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi is calling on India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to look into the ethnic violence that left 55 dead and more than 200,000 displaced in his state over the past week. "The culprits involved in the clashes must be identified and punished," he said. The clashes, centered around Udalguri district, were between the Bodo tribal people and Bangladeshi settlers, who fought with guns, bows and arrows, machetes and spears. But at least 24 of the dead were shot by police who fired into the crowds.

Attacks in the Iraqi city of Mosul have forced nearly 1,000 Christians, or some 500 families, to flee their homes over the past week, the governor of the northern Ninawa (Nineveh) province reports. Duraid Mohammed Kashmoula Oct. 11 said most have taken shelter in schools, churches, monasteries and the homes of relatives in the northern and eastern fringes of Ninawa. Chaldean Archbishop Louis Sako said Iraq's Christians are facing a campaign of "liquidation" and called on the US military to do more to protect them.

Pope Benedict XVI Oct. 9 backed the beatification of World War II-era pontiff Pius XII, defending his controversial legacy and asserting that he "often acted in secret and in silence" to defend Jews during the Holocaust. Celebrating a mass commemorating 50 years since Pius' death, Benedict said: "In light of the concrete situations of that complex historical moment, he sensed that this was the only way to avoid the worst and save the greatest possible number of Jews." Benedict said he prayed the process of beatification "can proceed happily."

Around 100 people are believed dead off the coast of Yemen after being forced overboard by smugglers in the Gulf of Aden. Some 47 survivors told the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) that a smuggling boat carrying about 150 passengers departed the Somali port of Marera, near Bossaso, on Oct. 6 and spent three days crossing the Gulf. Then when the boat arrived about five kilometers off the coast of Yemen, all but 12 of the passengers were forced overboard.

Days after a US missile strike reportedly killed 20 in Pakistan's northwest, Islamabad's Foreign Ministry warned that such attacks are counter-productive. "We want them to realize that these attacks are destabilizing the situation, and they are not helping them or Pakistan," foreign ministry spokesman Mohammed Sadiq told the AP. "They are helping the terrorists." The comments came as a suicide bomber in an explosives-laden pickup truck attacked an an outdoor meeting where tribal elders were discussing plans to move against a Taliban militant base that had been established in the area, in the Orakzai tribal agency. The blast left some 40 dead. (AP, NYT, Oct. 11)