Mexico suspects ex-drug czar took huge bribes from traffickers

Mexican authorities have detained the country's former drug czar on suspicion that he may have accepted $450,000 a month in bribes from drug traffickers, Mexico's attorney general said Friday.
Noe Ramirez Mandujano was in charge from 2006 until this August of the attorney general's office that specializes in combatting organized crime.
Ramirez is accused of meeting with members of a drug cartel while he was in office and agreeing to provide information on investigations in exchange for the bribes, Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora Icaza said at a news conference Friday.
The arrest was part of an ongoing investigation called "Operation Limpieza," or "Operation Cleanup," the attorney general said. The operation targets officials who may have passed information to drug cartels.
The arrest was announced Thursday night, four days after the house arrest of Ricardo Gutierrez Vargas, the director for International Police Affairs at Mexico's Federal Investigative Agency and the head of Mexico's Interpol office.
Authorities say more than 30 officials have been arrested since July in connection with the anti-corruption operation.

U.S. presses Iran for information on missing FBI agent

The State Department called on Iran on Friday to pony up any information it has on a former FBI agent who vanished there last year.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack urged Tehran to share "any and all information" about Robert Levinson, who disappeared from Iran's Kish Island over 19 months ago.
"The U.S. Department of State remains committed to determining Mr. Levinson's whereabouts, and returning him safely to his family that includes seven children, one grandchild and a second grandchild on the way," McCormack said in a statement.
Senior administration officials say the United States is increasing pressure on Iran to provide information on Levinson's whereabouts. Several officials have said they suspect Iranian authorities are holding Levinson in a jail inside the country.

However, they stress they have no information confirming their suspicions and have consistently voiced frustration with the lack of developments in the case.
"Some people suspect he is being held by the Iranian government, but nobody knows that for a fact, or we would be saying that," one senior State Department official said. "We all agree the Iranians are not putting forth 110 percent effort to find this man."
Levinson is a retired FBI agent from Coral Springs, Florida. After leaving the agency, his wife says, he worked as a security consultant specializing in cigarette smuggling.

South African teen gets 4 life terms for racist murders

A white teen convicted of murdering four blacks, including two children, in a racist killing spree in South Africa's North West province was sentenced Friday to four life terms in prison.

"I respect the court's decision, [but] we are going to appeal," the attorney for Johan Nel, 19, told CNN in a telephone interview. "We believe there is a possibility that the court made a mistake."
Nel, who was 18 when he committed the crimes in January, also targeted 11 others and was sentenced to 68 years for 11 counts of attempted murder. He also got five years for possessing a firearm and three years for possessing ammunition, the latter two without a license, Nel's attorney Frikkie Pretorius said.
He said his client missed when he shot at four of the 11 but managed to shoot and injure the other seven.
Pretorius said Nel killed a mother and the infant she was holding, a man in his 70s, and a 10-year-old boy. Aside from the mother and child, the people were not related.
Nel pleaded guilty to the crimes to avoid a trial, the lawyer said.
In announcing the appeal, Pretorius contended the court refused to consider "compelling circumstances" that affected the crime.
Pretorius said Nel was home-schooled and never learned to socialize with other children, especially black children. His upbringing played a major role, the lawyer said.
He also said, however, that a psychologist told the court Nel was mentally competent.
Nel shot the victims on the street in the farming settlement of Skierlik, the attorney said.
The BBC quoted witnesses who said Nel shouted racist slurs during the shootings.
"They were relaxing, and all of a sudden he came around the corner and he shot them," Pretorius said.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions, which Pretorius said has a large membership in the area of the shootings, said it welcomed the life sentences and additional prison time ordered by the court.
"No lesser sentence could possibly have been given for such an appalling crime, motivated purely by racist obsessions, for which there can be absolutely no mitigating circumstances," union spokesman Patrick Craven said in a written statement.
"COSATU agrees with the judge that there is no place for racially motivated violence in a democratic South Africa," he said.
Union members demonstrated daily outside the court when the case began as a way of trying to ensure that justice was done, Craven added.
The sentence was handed down in the Mmabatho High Court in Mafikeng, and several media reports said the judge and prosecutor received death threats aimed at stopping the court from giving Nel a life sentence.

Analysts: Bush, Obama not taking lead in righting economy

President Bush has been noticeably absent from the machinations aimed at righting the nation's financial course. Analysts and key players differ over whether President-elect Barack Obama should get his economic team in place and take charge, or sit back and await his turn at the helm.
"Somebody has to speak up soon," said CNN senior political analyst David Gergen, explaining that he understands why Americans are growing anxious and yearning for direction and leadership.
"I think ... sort of the bottom feels like it is falling out for many people," said Gergen, who has advised four presidents. "They sense there's a total lack of leadership in Washington, that the White House is silent, the treasury secretary has been battered, the Federal Reserve can't speak up. These automakers come up to Capitol Hill and fail. And the president-elect is silent in Chicago."
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin said Obama has avoided entering the congressional tussle over whether to bail out the Big Three automakers.