In the World

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - President Thabo Mbeki gave the go-ahead yesterday for troops to step in and quell a surge of anti-immigrant violence that has left 42 dead and driven thousands from their homes.

It would be the first time troops have been sent into Johannesburg's townships since the end of apartheid in 1994.

Police spokesman Govindsamy Mariemuthoo said 42 people had died and 16,000 had been displaced after 10 days of unrest, most of it flaring in squatter camps that are home to impoverished South Africans and immigrants from neighboring countries.

- AP

MEXICO CITY - Mexico's drug violence has claimed another top police official: the second-in-command of the central state of Morelos.

Mexico City police said the body of Victor Enrique Payan was found with a second, unidentified Morelos state police officer late Tuesday in the trunk of a car parked south of Mexico City. Attached to the bodies was a message warning against joining the Sinaloa Cartel, based in the northwestern state of the same name.

Mexico's president has sent more than 24,000 soldiers nationwide to fight drug gangs. They have responded with unprecedented violence, beheading police and killing soldiers in response to a military and federal police crackdown. Some soldiers and police along the border with the United States have asked for asylum in the U.S.

- AP

MADRID, Spain - Spain's prime minister said yesterday that the arrest of the reputed leader of the armed Basque separatist group ETA had dealt the militant organization a serious setback.

Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Tuesday's arrest of Francisco Javier Lopez Pena, along with three other suspected senior members of ETA, was "certainly another important step in the victory of democracy against terror." ETA has been waging a sustained campaign of bombings after ending a cease-fire in late 2006.

The latest arrests came amid a renewed campaign of attacks by ETA. The group was blamed for killing a police officer in a massive car bombing last week in a Basque village. It claimed another car bombing Sunday near Bilbao.

- AP

Swedish police

arrested two maintenance workers on suspicion of plotting sabotage after they tried to enter a nuclear power plant with traces of a powerful explosive like that used in the 2005 London transit bombings. The plant's operator said no bomb was found.

Locally brewed

liquor apparently tainted with lethal chemicals continued to kill in southern India, with 156 people dying over five days. An additional 135 people were being treated in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

Austrian police

say a woman wielding pepper spray injured herself, 17 schoolchildren and their teacher in a Vienna subway car when she attacked a man who complained she was talking too loudly on her cell phone.