World Scene


April 24, 2008

SRI LANKA

Rebels, army clash, dozens killed

COLOMBO — Tamil rebels and government troops waged a fierce battle in northern Sri Lanka yesterday, killing 52 guerrillas and 38 soldiers in one of the deadliest clashes this year between the two sides, the military said.

The battle broke out early in the day, when rebel forces overran the front lines in the Muhamalai area of the Jaffna peninsula, north of the de facto rebel state, a military spokesman said.

The casualties marked one of the highest daily death tolls for soldiers in the recent round of fighting, which began more than two years ago.

SOMALIA

Amnesty claims killings in mosque

NAIROBI — Amnesty International yesterday accused Ethiopian soldiers of killing 21 people, including an imam and several Islamic scholars, at a Mogadishu mosque and said seven of the victims had their throats slit.
The rights group said the soldiers had also captured dozens of children during the raid on the Al Hidaaya mosque in the north of the Somali capital earlier this week during operations against Islamist insurgents.

Ethiopia has thousands of soldiers in Somalia to bolster a Western-backed government against rebels fighting an Iraq-style insurgency in the Horn of Africa nation.

BRITAIN

Red-faced Blair wins free ride

LONDON — Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was left red-faced when he was caught traveling on a train without a ticket and said he had no cash to pay the fare, the Daily Mail newspaper reported yesterday.

Mr. Blair, who has earned about $1 million on the speaking circuit since leaving office in June, was confronted by a ticket inspector as he traveled to Heathrow Airport to catch a flight to the United States on Monday. He said he had no cash for the 24.50 pounds ($48.50) fare because money an aide had given him was no longer in his pocket.

IRAQ

Lawmakers eye ban on toy guns

BAGHDAD — Iraqi lawmakers, alarmed at the exceptional levels of violence children are exposed to daily, are about to pass a bill to ban the import of toy guns, a member of Iraq's parliament said yesterday.

"Our children see too much violence on TV, they have it on their video games, they hear their parents talk about violence every day. It is rampant in the streets," parliamentary committee on women and children Chairwoman Samira al-Mussawi told Agence France-Presse.

NETHERLANDS

Anne Frank postcard discovered

AMSTERDAM — A Dutch school director preparing an exhibition on Anne Frank has found a holiday postcard signed by the Jewish teenage diarist, a museum said yesterday.

The card, sent in 1937, was addressed to one of Anne's best friends, Samme Ledermann, and postmarked from just across the Dutch border in Aachen, Germany, said Maatje Mostard, of the Anne Frank Museum.


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World Scene


April 25, 2008

IRAQ

Parties to rejoin al-Maliki government

BAGHDAD — Parties that walked out of Iraq's government last year have agreed to rejoin, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said yesterday, in what could amount to a long-awaited political breakthrough.

The main Sunni Arab bloc, the Accordance Front, said it intended to submit a list of candidates for Cabinet positions within days and could be back in Mr. al-Maliki's government soon. Its return has long been a major goal of the United States.

The Accordance Front quit Mr. al-Maliki's Shi'ite-led government last year at a time when most violence in Iraq pitted minority Sunni Arabs against majority Shi'ites.

SOUTH KOREA

Cloned dogs to sniff for drugs, bombs

INCHEON — The country that created the world's first cloned canine plans to put duplicated dogs on patrol to sniff out drugs and explosives.
The Korean Customs Service yesterday announced that seven cloned Labrador retrievers being trained near Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul. The dogs were born five to six months ago after being separately cloned from a skilled drug-sniffing canine in active service.

Because of the difficulties in finding dogs who are up to snuff for the critical jobs, officials said using clones could help reduce costs.

GAZA STRIP

U.N. halts food aid, citing fuel cutoff

GAZA CITY — The United Nations stopped distributing food to Palestinian refugees in Gaza yesterday after its vehicles ran out of fuel because of an Israeli blockade, a U.N. official said.

United Nations Relief Works Agency spokesman Adnan Abu Hasna said 700,000 Palestinians won't be getting basic food packets because the agency could not bring in new shipments or distribute them to the needy without fuel for its vehicles.

Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza after the Islamist Hamas overran the territory last summer. Israel has shipped fuel for Gaza's power plant but maintains a ban on gasoline and diesel fuel.

BRAZIL

Search suspended for ballooning priest

SAO PAULO — Brazil's air force has suspended its search for a Roman Catholic priest who vanished after sailing into the air attached to hundreds of balloons. The cleric's family chartered a private plane to continue the hunt.

The Rev. Adelir Antonio de Carli has been missing since Sunday, when he lifted off from the port city of Paranagua strapped to 1,000 balloons.

JAPAN

U.S. sailor charged in cabdriver's death

TOKYO — Prosecutors charged a U.S. sailor yesterday in the stabbing death of a taxi driver, one of a series of purported crimes by U.S. service members that has stirred anger in Japan.

Olatunbosun Ugbogu, a 22-year-old Nigerian citizen serving in the U.S. Navy, was charged with fatally stabbing Masaaki Takahashi, 61, near a U.S. naval base in Yokosuka, south of Tokyo, on March 19, Yokohama District Court officials said.

The sailor, who served on the USS Cowpens, faces charges of robbery, murder and illegal possession of a weapon.


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World Scene


April 26, 2008

SRI LANKA

Bomb hidden in bus kills 24

COLOMBO — A bomb hidden on the baggage rack of a packed, rush-hour bus exploded yesterday evening outside Colombo, killing 24 people in an attack that the military blamed on Tamil Tiger rebels. Among the dead were a Buddhist monk and a small child.

The bomb exploded about 6:45 p.m. at the bus depot in the town of Piliyandala, just south of the capital, witnesses said. The red public bus was about to depart for the nearby town of Kahapola.

PAKISTAN

Car bomb kills 3 in northwest

PESHAWAR — A car bomb killed three people in northwestern Pakistan yesterday, despite calls from Taliban leaders asking Islamist militants to refrain from attacks during efforts by the new government to reach peace deals in the region.

A spokesman for Pakistani Taliban militants claimed responsibility for the blast but said it did not damage their commitment to peace negotiations opened by the government.
It was the first major bombing since Pakistan's new government took office and pledged to scale back military operations against militants. The last deadly blast was a suicide attack that killed five soldiers in the South Waziristan region on March 20.

RUSSIA

Georgia threatened with use of force

MOSCOW — Russia warned yesterday it could use military force to protect its "compatriots" in Georgia's breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia if they were attacked.

Russia's ties with Georgia have been strained for more than a decade by Moscow's support of the two breakaway regions, which threw off Georgian rule after wars in the 1990s and where most of the population has been issued Russian passports.

NEPAL

Maoists lead tally as vote count ends

KATMANDU — Nepal's Maoist former rebels won 220 seats in the 601-member special assembly, making them the single largest party, the Election Commission said yesterday.

The election crowns a 2006 peace deal ending a 10-year-long Maoist insurgency that killed some 13,000 people in one of the world's poorest countries.

The new assembly will write a new constitution and abolish Nepal's 240-year-old monarchy.

TURKEY

2 soldiers killed in PKK clashes

DIYARBAKIR — Two Turkish soldiers were killed yesterday during fighting with Kurdish separatists in mountainous southeast Turkey, the General Staff said.

One was a major and the other an enlisted soldier, military sources had said earlier, adding the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, also suffered casualties in the two-day firefight in Sirnak province near the border with Iraq.

IRAN

Runoff vote held for parliament

TEHRAN — Iranians voted yesterday in a runoff parliamentary election expected to leave conservatives still firmly in control after many moderates were disqualified in the first round.

Polling stations closed at 9 p.m., three hours after the scheduled closing time, state television said. Such extensions are common in Iranian elections to allow more voters to cast ballots.

Conservatives won a majority of seats in the 290-member parliament in the first round of the election in March, but in some places no candidate secured enough votes to win — hence the runoff.


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World Scene


April 27, 2008

MEXICO

Drug battle kills 17 near U.S. border

TIJUANA — Seventeen Mexican drug-gang members were killed near the U.S. border yesterday, their bodies scattered along a road after one of the deadliest shootouts in Mexico's three-year narco-war.

Rival factions of the Arellano Felix drug cartel in Tijuana on the Mexico-California border battled each other with rifles and machine guns in the early hours of the morning, police said.

VENEZUELA

Richardson: Chavez to help free hostages

CARACAS — New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson says Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is "ready to help re-engage in negotiations" for the release of three
American hostages held captive by rebels in Colombia.

Mr. Richardson said yesterday he plans to put forward a proposal for the hostages' release in the coming weeks and that Mr. Chavez is willing to work with him as a "primary mediator."

Mr. Richardson met Mr. Chavez last night.

He said he was visiting Venezuela at the request of hostages' families. U.S. defense contractors Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell have been held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, since their plane went down in rebel-held jungles in February 2003.

IRAQ

Saddam's deputy faces trial

BAGHDAD — Tariq Aziz, former deputy prime minister and the international face of the Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein, goes on trial Tuesday over his purported role in the execution of 42 Baghdad merchants in 1992.

Aziz and seven other henchmen of the deposed and hanged dictator are accused of executing the merchants after blaming them for raising food prices when Iraq was under U.N. sanctions.

MOROCCO

Fire kills 55 in mattress factory

CASABLANCA — A fire roared through a mattress factory in a poor section of Casablanca yesterday, killing up to 55 workers and injuring as many as 24 others, Moroccan officials said.

The head of the Red Crescent rescue operation said an emergency exit was blocked and that firefighters arrived two hours after the blaze began at about 10 a.m.

The fire in an industrial area on the edge of the sprawling city, Morocco's chief port and economic capital, appeared to be the North African kingdom's worst since a blaze killed 50 prisoners in a jail in 2002.

UGANDA

Police raid magazine office

KAMPALA — Ugandan security forces raided the offices of a magazine regarded as critical of President Yoweri Museveni's government, arresting three journalists and taking away computers, a lawyer said yesterday.

It was the second time the bimonthly Independence has been raided since its launch in October last year. Lawyer Bob Kasango said the magazine was accused of "being in possession of seditious materials and publishing inflammatory materials." A government spokeswoman said the magazine published three articles that defamed top government officials.


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World Scene


April 28, 2008

CHINA

Scores hurt, killed in crash of trains

BEIJING — Dozens were injured or killed in a collision of two passenger trains in eastern China today, the official Xinhua news agency cited a medical worker at the scene as saying.

Witnesses and a government spokesman also said there were heavy casualties in the collision in the eastern province of Shandong, which caused 10 rail cars to topple into a ditch, Xinhua reported.

"More than 80 people are injured, both seriously and not as seriously," a hospital official in Zhoucun district told Reuters.

One train, en route from Beijing to the eastern city of Qingdao, hit another in Zibo, in Shandong province, in the early hours, a spokesman with the Shandong provincial government was quoted as saying.

The second train was traveling between Yantai, in Shandong, and Xuzhou in the neighboring province of Jiangsu.

In January, a high-speed train rammeda group of maintenance workers in the dark in Shandong, killing 18 in China's worst railway accident in years.

SRI LANKA

Rebel aircraft bomb army post

COLOMBO— Separatist rebels used light aircraft to bomb an army defense line in Sri Lanka's war-torn north early yesterday, hours after fierce clashes killed 42 combatants, the military said.

Military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said the Tamil Tiger plane dropped three bombs near Sri Lankan forces in the Welioya region, but that no soldiers were hurt.

Rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan was not immediately available for comment.

ZIMBABWE

Election results coming from media

HARARE — A recount of disputed legislative seats has confirmed opposition's control of parliament and should be complete yesterday, allowing the release of results from last month's presidential election, state media reported.

The Sunday Mail newspaper, a government mouthpiece, said the state Electoral Commission planned to invite President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai to a final "verification and collation exercise" today.

The opposition and an independent Zimbabwean observer group say that Mr. Tsvangirai won the presidential race, and Mr. Mugabe has been accused of using delays, fraud, violence and torture to hold onto power.

CUBA

Retirees, others getting raises

HAVANA — Cuba is giving raises to retirees on state pensions and court employees and says salary increases for more government employees are on the way.

Cuban retirees will receive pension increases of just under $2 a month starting next month. Minimum pensions will rise to $9.50 a month.

Justice system employees will get raises worth $10 a month, with judges and prosecutors receiving raises roughly double that. The sector's median monthly salary will rise to $26.60.

WEST BANK

Bank links blockade, Palestinian economy

RAMALLAH — The Palestinian economy won't grow this year, largely because of Israeli restrictions on movement and despite billions of dollars in aid meant to shore up support for peace talks, the World Bank predicted yesterday.

The bleak prognosis stands in contrast to the bank's initial assessment that double-digit economic growth would be possible if Israel, the Palestinian government and the donors did their part.

IRAQ

Museum gets back 701 stolen artifacts

BAGHDAD — The Iraqi National Museum is welcoming home 701 artifacts stolen during the looting after Saddam Hussein's ouster in 2003.

Syrian authorities turned over items ranging from golden necklaces to clay pots that were seized by traffickers in the neighboring country.

Iraqi officials say Syria is the first country to hand over a large quantity of stolen antiquities.


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World Scene


April 29, 2008

VIETNAM

Adoption pact with U.S. to end

HANOI — Vietnam is ending a child-adoption agreement with the United States after being accused of allowing baby-selling and corruption, officials said yesterday.

The agreement was being considered for renewal, but the two sides remained far apart over revisions, said Vu Duc Long, director of Vietnam's International Adoption Agency. The agreement is due to expire on Sept. 1.

Americans including actress Angelina Jolie adopted more than 1,200 Vietnamese children during the 18 months ending March 31.

GAZA STRIP

Family of 5 killed in disputed blast

GAZA CITY — An explosion shattered a tiny Gaza Strip house as Israeli troops battled militants yesterday, killing a Palestinian woman and four of her children in new bloodshed that threatened efforts to arrange a truce between the warring sides.
Palestinians said the house was hit by an Israeli tank shell. Israel said explosives being carried by militants blew up and brought down the two-room structure.

Israel's military said its troops launched an operation in the town after gunmen armed with explosives approached a border patrol.

IRAN

Russia claims progress in talks

TEHRAN — Iran and Russia yesterday discussed the outlines of "serious proposals" aimed at assuring the international community that Tehran's nuclear program is peaceful, state media reported.

Top Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili did not provide details of the proposals but said Tehran will soon unveil them publicly.

Later yesterday, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, called the package "a comprehensive plan" addressed to the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany.

CUBA

Boycott grows at U.S. tribunal

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE — Osama bin Laden's former driver has joined other Guantanamo detainees in refusing to participate in his war-crimes trial, declaring yesterday he felt no hope for justice after more than six years in confinement.

The case against Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni, is scheduled to be the first to reach trial at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba next month. But his decision to boycott could prolong a process already delayed by legal challenges.

The U.S. says Hamdan delivered weapons to al Qaeda and its associates and trained at terrorist camps. He could get life in prison if convicted on charges of conspiracy and supporting terrorism.


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World Scene


April 30, 2008

CHINA

30 sentenced in Tibet riots

BEIJING — A Chinese court yesterday sentenced 30 people, including six monks, to jail terms ranging from three years to life in prison for their purported roles in deadly riots in the Tibetan capital last month, state media reported.

The Intermediate People's Court of Lhasa announced the sentences at an open session. The trial was the first since the mid-March riots.

Three men received life sentences, including a Buddhist monk identified as Basang, the official Xinhua news agency said. Basang led 10 people, including five other monks, to destroy local government offices, burn down shops and attack policemen, it said. Of the five other monks, two were sentenced to 20 years and three to 15 years in prison.

China has said 22 people died in the riots, while Tibet's government-in-exile in India announced yesterday it thinks at least 203 Tibetans were killed.

RUSSIA

More troops sent to Georgia region

MOSCOW — Russia yesterday dispatched extra peacekeeping troops to Georgia's breakaway Abkhazia region to counter what it said were Georgian plans for an attack, prompting the European Union to accuse it of stoking tensions.

The European Union's foreign-policy chief, Javier Solana, said after talks in Luxembourg with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that the Russian deployment was unwise.

Russia said the increase was within the limit of 3,000 troops set out in a 1994 cease-fire agreement brokered by the United Nations. But it angered Georgia, which accuses the Russian peacekeepers there of siding with the separatists.

INDIA

Iranian president pushes gas pipeline

NEW DELHI — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pushed to seal a $7.6 billion pipeline deal linking the world's second-largest known gas reserves to growing South Asian economies, despite opposition from the United States.

Mr. Ahmadinejad met Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh yesterday in a brief stopover trip that has already sparked diplomatic tension between New Delhi and Washington, which fears the pipeline will fund Iran's nuclear ambitions.

The Iranian leader visited Pakistan on Monday before moving on to Sri Lanka and then India. The pipeline project, which could be completed by 2012, would initially transport 2.2 billion cubic feet of gas daily to Pakistan and India.

HONG KONG

Activists deported before torch arrives

HONG KONG — Three pro-Tibet activists who planned to protest during Hong Kong's leg of the Olympic torch relay were deported after they arrived at the territory's airport yesterday, activists said.

It was the second known instance in which activists have been denied entry ahead of the Olympic torch's arrival in Hong Kong today. The flame's return to Chinese soil follows a global tour marred by protests against Beijing's human rights record and its recent crackdown in Tibet.


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May 1, 2008

Al Qaeda gaining strength, U.S. says

Al Qaeda has rebuilt some of its pre-9/11 capabilities from remote hiding places in Pakistan, leading to a major spike in attacks last year in that country and neighboring Afghanistan, the Bush administration said yesterday.

Attacks in Pakistan more than doubled from 375 to 887 between 2006 and 2007, and the number of fatalities almost quadrupled from 335 to 1,335, the State Department said in its annual terrorism report.

In Afghanistan, the number of attacks rose 16 percent, to 1,127 incidents last year, killing 1,966 people, 55 percent more than the 1,257 who died in 2006, it said.

The report said attacks in Iraq dipped slightly between 2006 and 2007, but they still accounted for 60 percent of worldwide terrorism fatalities. More than 22,000 people were killed by terrorists around the world in 2007, 8 percent more than in 2006.

IRAN

Tehran complains about Clinton remark

NEW YORK — Iran complained to the United Nations yesterday about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's comment the United States could "totally obliterate" Iran in retaliation for a nuclear strike against Israel.
Iran's deputy ambassador to the United Nations sent a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the president of the Security Council expressing Iran's condemnation of "such a provocative, unwarranted and irresponsible statement."

Mrs. Clinton made the remarks last week while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination.

AFGHANISTAN

Security forces raid militants' hide-out

KABUL — Afghan security forces raided a Kabul hide-out yesterday where militants with suspected links to the attack on President Hamid Karzai were holed up, a top official said. Seven people died in the pre-dawn raid, including a child.

Militants hiding in a mud-brick house and security forces traded rocket-propelled grenades and automatic gunfire for several hours in western Kabul. Families evacuated the area as explosions reverberated and gunfire pierced the air.

TURKEY

Parliament revises limits on speech

ANKARA — Turkey's parliament approved a long-awaited revision of a law criticized by the European Union for limiting free speech in the EU-candidate country, but writers and activists say the reform does not go far enough.

The reform to Article 301 of the penal code was approved early yesterday with 250 votes for and 65 against amid fierce criticism from the nationalist opposition.

The law has been used to prosecute hundreds of writers, including Nobel Literature laureate Orhan Pamuk, for "insulting Turkishness."

AUSTRALIA

5 die in accident in Sydney Harbor

SYDNEY — A fishing trawler and a small boat collided before dawn today in Sydney Harbor, killing five people and injuring nine, authorities said.

The collision, which occurred in cold and dark conditions, threw all 14 people aboard the small boat into the water, said police Inspector Tony Bear.

All of the dead and injured — ages 18 to 31 — were on the small boat, which was licensed to carry eight people.

RUSSIA

Czar's dead children identified by DNA

MOSCOW — DNA tests carried out by a U.S. laboratory prove that bone fragments exhumed last year belong to two children of Czar Nicholas II, putting to rest questions about what happened to Russia's last royal family, a regional governor said yesterday.

Bone fragments dug up near the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg are indeed those of Crown Prince Alexei and his sister, Maria, whose remains had been missing since the family was murdered in 1918 as Russia descended into civil war.

The confirmation could end royal supporters' persistent hopes that members of the czar's immediate family survived the massacre.

CHINA

Children rescued from slavery

BEIJING — Chinese police have rescued 167 village children sold to work as slave laborers in a city in the booming southern province of Guangdong, newspapers said yesterday.

The children, all from the ethnic Yi minority, came from poor families in the Liangshan region of the southwestern province of Sichuan, more than 600 miles away.


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May 2, 2008

IRAQ

Iran shown proof of aid to militias

BAGHDAD — An Iraqi delegation traveled to Iran with evidence that proves the Islamic republic is arming and training Shi'ite militias in Iraq, an official said yesterday.

Five Shi'ite politicians left Wednesday carrying documents and other material that they say indicates that Iran is supplying weapons and training fighters who are locked in a violent standoff with U.S. and Iraqi troops, the government official said.

Northeast of Baghdad, a double suicide bombing struck a wedding convoy, killing at least 35 people and wounding 65, police said. In Baghdad, a car bomb aimed at a U.S. patrol killed an American soldier and at least nine Iraqi civilians, police and military said.

TURKEY

Air force bombs Kurdish rebel camps

ANKARA — Turkish air force planes launched a bombing raid against camps of a Kurdish separatist group in the Qandil area of northern Iraq late yesterday , the state news agency Anatolian said.
The raids, by several Turkish air force jets on the Kurdistan Workers Party camps, began just before midnight and continued into today , Anatolian said.

EGYPT

Cameraman freed from Gitmo

CAIRO — Al Jazeera television reported yesterday that cameraman Sami al-Haj has been released from Guantanamo after more than six years in U.S. custody and is en route to his home country Sudan.

Wadah Khanfar, managing director of Al-Jazeera Arabic, confirmed Mr. al-Haj was on a plane heading to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, after being released from the U.S. detention center in Cuba earlier yesterday.

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, declined to comment on the report.

MIDDLE EAST

Abbas has heart procedure in Jordan

JERUSALEM — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas underwent an unannounced heart test at a Jordanian hospital yesterday, adding new uncertainty to already troubled Middle East peace talks.

Aides to Mr. Abbas, 73, said he was doing well after a catheterization procedure they described as successful, and that he was expected to leave Jordan Hospital later in the day. Abbas is due to return to the West Bank today and is expected to return to work immediately after his arrival, they said.

KUWAIT

Suicide bomber was ex-Gitmo inmate

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A Kuwaiti man released from the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay in 2005 has carried out a suicide bombing in Iraq, his cousin told Al Arabiya television yesterday.

A friend of Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi in Iraq informed his family that Abdullah carried out the attack in Mosul, his cousin Salem said. He did not say when the suicide bombing happened.

Abdullah, 30, had been missing for two weeks and his family learned he left Kuwait illegally for Syria, he said. Abdullah had sent messages to his wife from Iraq.

BRITAIN

Bin Laden's son denied residency

CAIRO — One of Osama bin Laden's sons has been denied British residency because London authorities think his presence in the country would cause "considerable public concern," the man's wife said yesterday.

Omar Osama bin Laden, a 27-year-old metals trader, had hoped to live in Britain with his British-born wife. The couple lives in Cairo but she is eager to return to her country, where she has a home.

But his wife, Zaina Alsabah, said Omar's residency application was rejected. Omar has not renounced his father, but says he wants to be an "ambassador for peace" between Muslims and the West.

PAKISTAN

Progress reported on returning judges

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Pakistani leaders reported progress yesterday in talks on how to restore judges ousted by President Pervez Musharraf, signaling they had fended off a crisis that threatened to break up their month-old coalition government.

Asif Ali Zardari, the widower and political successor of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif wrapped up two days of marathon talks yesterday at a Dubai hotel.

The parties in the coalition came to power in February elections. Mr. Musharraf ousted some 60 senior judges — including then-Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry — when he imposed a state of emergency in November to stop legal challenges to his re-election as president.

CUBA

May Day rally urges economic gains

HAVANA — Hundreds of thousands of Cubans marched through Havana's Revolution Square yesterday for a red-splashed May Day celebration that urged economic gains and increased productivity from workers.

A sea of people, wearing red shirts and waving red flags, paraded through the vast square as President Raul Castro, making his first May Day appearance as Cuba's leader, looked on from a podium beneath a statue of national hero Jose Marti.

He did not speak, but the emphasis Mr. Castro has placed on improving Cuba's socialist economy was a dominant theme during the annual festivities that celebrate the international labor movement.

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May 3, 2008

YEMEN

Bomb kills 18 outside mosque

SAN'A — A bomb rigged to a motorcycle blew up amid a crowd of worshippers leaving Friday prayers at a mosque in a rebel stronghold of northern Yemen, killing at least 18 people and wounding about four dozen, officials said.

The attack occurred in Saada, a city in a mountainous Shi'ite Muslim area on the border with Saudi Arabia where a rebellion by members of the al-Zaydi sect erupted in 2004. Thousands have died in violence between the rebels and the government of this predominantly Sunni country.

Government officials blamed the bombing on rebel leader Abdel-Malek al-Hawthi and said six people had been arrested in Saada. Al-Hawthi denied involvement and charged that senior army officers staged the attack to stoke tensions.

SUDAN

Officials among 21 killed in plane crash

KHARTOUM — A plane carrying southern Sudan's defense minister and a presidential adviser crashed yesterday, killing all 21 people on board, state media reported.
Nineteen passengers and two crew members were killed when the plane went down in a remote Bahr Gazal region of southern Sudan, state-run Sudan News Agency reported. Minister of Defense Dominic Dim Deng and Justin Yak, an adviser to the Southern Sudan president, were among the dead.

The cause of the crash was not immediately known.

Southern Sudan has its own semiautonomous government after a 2005 peace deal that ended more than two decades of civil war between the ethnic African south and Sudan's Arab-dominated government in the capital Khartoum.

CHINA

Virus outbreak claims 21 children

BEIJING — An outbreak of intestinal virus in eastern China has claimed the lives of at least 21 children and the number of reported cases has risen to nearly 2,500, the official Xinhua News Agency said yesterday.

Xinhua said all those suffering from Enterovirus 71 were under age 6 and most were under age 2. The outbreak was first reported in March in Fuyang, a city in the eastern province of Anhui.

The virus causes fever, mouth sores and a rash with blisters.

GERMANY

Member of plot to kill Hitler dies

BERLIN — Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager, believed to be the last surviving member of the inner circle of plotters who attempted to kill Adolf Hitler in 1944 with a briefcase bomb, has died. He was 90.

The German military said yesterday that the former army major died Thursday night. It did not give a cause of death.

Von Boeselager was part of a group of officers who tried to kill Hitler on July 20, 1944, supplying explosives for the operation led by Col. Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg. The plot is the basis for the upcoming Tom Cruise film "Valkyrie" in which the American actor plays the aristocratic colonel.

SOMALIA

Islamist insurgents threaten revenge

MOGADISHU — A U.S. air strike that killed the suspected al Qaeda leader in Somalia brought warnings of vengeance from Islamic insurgents yesterday and the threat of a boycott that could jeopardize peace talks with the U.N.-supported government.

The biggest alliance supporting Somalia's Islamic insurgency said it might pull out of planned May 10 talks on escalating fighting and a humanitarian crisis that has caused thousands of civilian deaths over the past year.

In a pre-dawn attack Thursday, U.S. missiles destroyed the house of reputed al Qaeda leader Aden Hashi Ayro in the central town of Dusamareeb. The attack killed 24 others, a town elder said.

BRITAIN

2 men convicted of blackmailing royal

LONDON — Two men were convicted yesterday and sentenced to five years in prison in the first plot to blackmail a member of Britain's royal family in more than a century.

Ian Strachan, 31, and Sean McGuigan, 41, were found guilty in a complicated blackmail scheme against the royal that featured allegations involving sex and drugs. The judge ordered that the royal's name be kept secret.


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