■ MEXICO
Police stop illegal mills
Police conducted the biggest anti-logging raid in the nation's history at clandestine sawmills that cut timber on a threatened nature reserve where Monarch butterflies nest in the winter, the government said on Thursday. Illegal deforestation in and around the reserves threatens the butterflies, which rely on the forest cover to protect them from the cold, high-altitude winds. The logs and lumber seizure was the equivalent of about 600 heavy truckloads of logs, the attorney general's office said, calling the Wednesday raid "the largest seizure of illegally logged wood in the country's history." Police detained 56 people, prosecutors said.
■ CUBA
Police sorry for church raid
Authorities have apologized for a raid on dissidents at a church in Santiago, Archbishop Dionisio Garcia said. The government's local Office for Religious Affairs and a member of the Communist Party's Ideological Department said they regretted the incident, the archbishop of the eastern Cuban city said on Thursday night. The incident occurred on Tuesday, when security personnel forced their way into Santa Teresita Church and attacked 25 dissidents, the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation said. Up to 15 of the dissidents, who had earlier demonstrated peacefully for the release of political prisoners, were beaten and arrested at a church, it said.
■ FRANCE
Hillary popular abroad
Americans and Europeans agree that Democratic Party presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton would make the best US president of the candidates for the post, according to a poll made public yesterday. However, the survey by the Harris Institute for France 24 television and the Paris-based International Herald Tribune found enthusiasm for Clinton was significantly higher among Europeans than Americans. Asked which of 10 candidates would make the best president, Clinton received the nod from 22 percent of the Americans, 24 percent of the British, 29 percent of the Spaniards, 30 percent of the Italians, 35 percent of the French and 40 percent of the Germans. She was far ahead of the two men who finished second, Democratic rival Barack Obama and Republican Rudy Giuliani, both of whom were supported by 12 percent of the US respondents.
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