World
Terrorists kidnapped another American and three non-Iraqis during a gunfight in Baghdad, intensifying a wave of violence in the hours before the US presidential election. First reports said the captives are employees of a Saudi company, but there was no immediate word on their fate. Earlier Monday, gunmen assassinated the city's deputy governor, and insurgent mortar rounds landed on Polish and Japanese military bases elsewhere in Iraq.
A teenage Palestinian exploded a bomb in an open-air Israeli produce market, killing himself and three others and wounding at least 32 more. The incident, in Tel Aviv, came as Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat receives medical treatment in France. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a group with ties to Arafat, claimed responsibility. Arafat condemned the act, but Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said it proved there is no change in Palestinian terrorist policy in his absence.
Hundreds of soldiers were deployed to guard a controversial dam site in western China, and martial law was imposed on a central county after separate eruptions of violence that may have resulted in more than 150 deaths and dozens of injuries and arrests, reports said. The first incident occurred as police in Sichuan Province clashed with tens of thousands of villagers protesting the loss of their homes to the dam. The second began as a dispute between Hui Muslims and the ethnic Han majority over a fatal traffic accident.
A global summit was called for next week to address worries of a pandemic caused by the spread of so-called bird flu and a shortage of vaccine. Sixteen pharmaceutical companies have agreed to send representatives to the session in Geneva, along with officials from the US and other nations, the UN's World Health Organization (WHO) said. The meeting was called as Thailand braced for more outbreaks of bird flu, which is blamed for 12 deaths so far. Twenty Vietnamese also have died. The WHO wants to explore issues that could block production of sufficient vaccine to deal with a global spread - a process that takes at least six months, its spokesman said.
The first successful leftist presidential candidate in Uruguayan history scored an easy victory in Sunday's national election, widening a South American trend that already extends to Venezuela, Brazil, and Argen-tina. Former Montivideo Mayor Tabare Vazquez took 50.2 percent of the votes, compared to 34 percent for his closest rival. He pledged to strengthen relations with those leftist governments and to restore diplomatic ties with communist-led Cuba.
