Suspects in drug cases are extradited to U.S.

BOGOTA - The government sent 14 Colombians to the United States on Friday in the first mass extradition of nationals accused of drug-related offenses, the police said.

Thirteen of the Colombians are charged with drug trafficking and one with laundering money, police said. They were escorted on a plane bound for the United States by law officers commissioned by the U.S. Embassy, a police statement said.

HAITI

Leaders must disarm illegal groups, U.N. says

Haiti's interim government must disarm illegal groups to extend its control throughout the country and prepare for elections next year, the U.N. Security Council said Friday.

Prime Minister Gerard Latortue took office March 17 as head of an interim government replacing President Jean-Bertrand Aristide who resigned in February and fled the country. The government has pledged to hold elections in 2005.

Latortue's government must confront armed groups who continue to act as unauthorized police and administrators in some Haitian cities, said a statement by council president, Spanish Ambassador Juan Antonio Yanez-Barnuevo.

JAPAN

Accused Army deserter surrenders to U.S.

Saluting and standing at attention, accused U.S. Army deserter Charles Jenkins surrendered to U.S. military authorities today to face charges that he left his army unit in 1965 and defected to North Korea.

Jenkins, 64, turned himself in at the U.S. Army's Camp Zama accompanied by his Japanese wife and two daughters, taking a major step toward settling a diplomatic quandary between Washington and Tokyo.

The North Carolina native, who had been hospitalized since arriving in Japan in July, saluted and stood at attention before entering the provost marshal's office to be put back on active duty as a sergeant.

NEPAL

Rebels bomb American information center

KATMANDU - Suspected communist rebels bombed the American information center in Nepal's capital Friday, damaging parts of the building but causing no injuries, police said.

It was the first time the rebels, who oppose U.S. support to the Nepalese government, have directly attacked an American government agency in Nepal.

Assailants threw two bombs from the parking lot and fled, police said.

COLORADO

Sand Dunes to become newest national park

DENVER - Colorado will become home to the country's newest national park Monday when Interior Secretary Gale Norton officially reclassifies the Great Sand Dunes National Monument.

Norton will join Rep. Scott McInnis and Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell in a ceremony at the dunes to designate the southern Colorado site a national park. McInnis, Campbell and fellow Republican Sen. Wayne Allard sponsored legislation and lobbied to have the 750-foot dunes, North America's tallest, the surrounding mountains and the sagebrush-dotted high desert turned into a national park.

The dunes hug the bottom of the snowy Sangre de Cristo Mountains that tower over the San Luis Valley. The landscape changes from 8,200-foot-high grasslands, to the dunes, to 13,000-plus-foot mountains and alpine lakes - all within four miles.

The area is home to seven species - six insects and a mouse - not found anywhere else in the world.

NORTH CAROLINA

Army amputee wins appeal to re-enlist

FAYETTEVILLE - A reservist who lost his right arm in a roadside bombing in Iraq re-enlisted in the Army on the same day he received a Bronze Star for his service.

Sgt. Chuck Bartles, 26, raised his prosthetic right arm as he took an oath Thursday during a re-enlistment ceremony at the Airborne & Special Operations Museum.

Amputees usually get medical discharges, but Bartles twice appealed to officials. Satisfied that he could perform his duties, they let him re-enlist.

CONNECTICUT

State ethics boss fired for alleged misconduct

HARTFORD - The head of Connecticut's ethics commission was fired Friday after being accused of such things as cheating on his work hours and telling a subordinate to lie in response to a federal subpoena.

The State Ethics Commission voted unanimously to remove Alan Plofsky as executive director, saying there was enough evidence to prove the allegations.

Plofsky denied any wrongdoing and vowed to fight for his job.

''This was unfair and improper and I will be exonerated,'' he said.

The commission had accused Plofsky of misuse of compensatory time, directing the release of a potentially privileged letter from the attorney general to a newspaper, directing a staff member to destroy a tape of a meeting and telling a staff member to lie in a grand jury matter.

Plofsky, who served 16 years as executive director, said, ''I have never engaged in substantive misconduct in my life.''