World in brief

Eradicating opium seen as ineffective

The United States is shifting its strategy against Afghanistan’s drug trade, phasing out funding for opium eradication while boosting efforts to fight trafficking and promote alternate crops, the U.S. envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, said Saturday.

The aim of the new policy: to deprive the Taliban of the tens of millions of dollars in drug revenues that are fueling its insurgency. Holbrooke said the old police was only driving Afghan farmers into the hands of the Taliban.

Meanwhile, Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on the Taliban to refrain from disrupting the nationwide election to be held Aug. 20 and to cast ballots themselves.

Anti-IRA groups begin disarming

Northern Ireland achieved another important milestone in peacemaking Saturday as the territory’s two major Protestant paramilitary groups announced their first acts of disarmament —- and pledged that their decades of slaughtering Catholic civilians were over for good.

The Ulster Volunteer Force said it had destroyed its entire stockpile of weaponry during a secret June 12 meeting with disarmament chiefs. The Ulster Defense Association said it had handed over its first, unspecified portion of its arsenal and would continue the process in coming months. Together, the two underground groups killed nearly 1,000 people in a self-declared war against the support base of the Irish Republican Army.

Police clash with parking protesters

Police turned water cannons on a raucous demonstration in Jerusalem by Ultra-Orthodox Jews on Saturday, the second consecutive day of protests over the opening of a city parking lot on the Jewish Sabbath, when religious Jews are forbidden to drive.

Thousands of Ultra-Orthodox protesters were on the streets throughout the Israeli city Saturday, police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said. Police said they made 24 arrests and one 6-year-old boy was slightly hurt by a stone thrown by protesters.

Taliban targeted in assault on camps

Pakistani security forces raided a Taliban hideout in the southern city of Karachi on Saturday and pounded suspected militant training camps in the northwest, killing at least 20 people and underscoring the nationwide challenge of eradicating insurgents. Police officials said the foray in Karachi thwarted plans for terrorist attacks in Pakistan’s largest city, while the bombing and shelling of targets in South Waziristan on the border with Afghanistan further weakened the Taliban as the military prepares for a new offensive there.

Military ties resume after 10-month hold

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer says the alliance and Russia have agreed to resume military ties after 10-month hiatus caused by the war between Russia and Georgia. Relations between the alliance and the Russian military were frozen in the aftermath of the five-day war last August. Although political ties have thawed considerably over the past five months, there have been no formal military contacts since then.

Search for bodies in plane crash ends

Brazil has called off the search for more bodies and debris from the Air France jet that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, but an American officer said the search for the black boxes would likely continue for at least another 16 days. Brazilian and French searchers have recovered large chunks of debris and 51 bodies from Air France Flight 447, which disappeared with 228 people on board late May 31.

Purported spy planes spur threat

North Korea threatened Saturday to shoot down any Japanese planes that enter its airspace, accusing Tokyo of spying near one of its missile launch sites. The North has designated a no-sail zone off its eastern coast through July 10 for military drills, raising concerns that it might test-fire short- or mid-range missiles in the coming days, in violation of a U.N. resolution.

Demonstrators take sides in TV turmoil

Thousands of Venezuelans held separate protests Saturday to support and condemn an opposition-aligned TV station that President Hugo Chavez’s government has threatened with closure. In recent weeks, the government has stepped up its confrontation with Globovision —- the only strongly anti-Chavez channel remaining on the open airwaves.

Drug cartel suspect linked to payoff list

Mexican soldiers have captured a suspected drug cartel operator with a list of the names of 33 local police officers who apparently received payoffs, the army said Saturday. A statement said Omar Ibarra was caught Friday on a street in the northern city of Monterrey.

Ibarra also had two hand grenades, two packages of marijuana and a 9 mm submachine gun with a silencer, the army said.

One of his alleged accomplices was captured with marijuana, cocaine and a gun, the statement said.