Officials: Missiles kill 6 near border

ISLAMABAD - A suspected US missile strike on a Taliban commander's home in Pakistan killed six people, officials said yesterday, a possible indication that Washington was moving ahead with cross-border raids despite protests from the new government. The attack was the first since President Asif Ali Zardari warned that its territory cannot "be violated by our friends." Late Tuesday, missiles fired by a US drone aircraft struck the Taliban commander's home near Mir Ali, a town in North Waziristan, which borders Afghanistan, said two intelligence officials, who asked for anonymity. Citing reports from agents, the officials said six people died, but did not identify any of the victims. (AP)

MEXICO CITY - The money that Mexicans living in the United States send home, a lifeline for both the economy here and millions of families, has suffered its steepest decline on record, dragged down in large part by the American financial crisis. The bad news, announced yesterday by the Bank of Mexico, follows government assurances that the US crisis would not have a severe effect on Mexico. Remittances fell to $1.9 billion for August, a 12.2 percent drop from the same month last year, the bank said. (Los Angeles Times)

BERLIN - The Allied firebombing of the eastern German city of Dresden in 1945 killed no more than 25,000 people - far fewer than scholars' previous estimates running as high as 135,000 - a special commission has found. The team of a dozen experts, including university professors, archivists and military historians, said yesterday that four years of research so far has confirmed 18,000 deaths and showed that police and city administrators at the time believed there were about 25,000 victims of the bombing. (AP)