AFGHANISTAN

A man claiming to be a leading Taliban spokesman denied a government report that he had been arrested, and a police official said it was possible the person being held just happened to have the same name.

The Interior Ministry said Qari Yousef Ahmadi was taken into custody with his brother during a police operation Wednesday in Sufiyan village in Helmand province.

But a man claiming to be Ahmadi called an Associated Press reporter who recognized his voice. "I've not been arrested," Ahmadi said.

Helmand provincial Police Chief Mohammed Hussein Andiwal said, "We have arrested Qari Yousef and his brother from a house yesterday, but I don't know which Qari Yousef it was or how many there are."

Meanwhile, officials were trying to gain the release of two International Committee of the Red Cross workers who were kidnapped in Wardak province.

Hurricane Lorenzo hit Mexico's Gulf Coast early today with winds of about 80 mph. The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said the storm came ashore southeast of Tuxpan.

Officials canceled classes and set up temporary shelters Thursday along the coast of Veracruz state, as the Mexican government issued a hurricane warning from Palma Sola to Cabo Rojo.

At least 30 communities near rivers were ordered to evacuate, and residents scrambled to move belongings to higher ground as roads began to flood.

Forecasters said the storm could dump 5 to 15 inches of rain.

Six top U.S.-based scientists have concluded that a planned U.S. missile defense system with interceptors in Poland and radar in the Czech Republic could target and stop Russian missiles, thus threatening Moscow's nuclear deterrent. That view backs Russia's criticism of the system.

The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency rejects the scientists' assessments, saying their analyses are flawed.

The U.S. says the missile system is intended to counter Iran and could not take out Russian missiles.

But the physicists said in interviews that Russia's concerns were justified. They are Theodore Postol, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; George Lewis of the Peace Studies Program at Cornell University; Pavel Podvig of Stanford University; Richard Garwin, a National Science Award winner; Philip Coyle, a former associate director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; and David Wright, a physicist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

From Times Wire Reports