World
Terrorists followed up the successful donors conference for rebuilding of Iraq by launching a flurry of new attacks, among them a bold rocket barrage on the Baghdad hotel where Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was staying. The strikes killed at least one person, a US Army colonel, and wounded 15 others. Wolfowitz, who was unhurt, said Iraqi security police stopped even more rockets from being launched at the Al Rasheed Hotel. The other incidents involved the shooting down of a US military helicopter and the assassination of an Iraqi police chief Friday as he left a Muslim prayer service. The donors conference raised about $33 billion of its $35.8 billion goal.
Without saying when, Hamas announced it was "preparing" for a new meeting with the acting Palestinian Authority prime minister to discuss ending attacks on Israel. But the announcement came two days after it claimed responsibility for the shooting deaths of three Israeli soldiers, two of them women, in the Gaza Strip. In response Sunday, Israeli forces demolished three unfinished 13-story Gaza apartment buildings they said were being used as observation posts for Palestinian attacks.
Rescue crews raced to try to reach 13 workers trapped deep inside a flooded coal mine in southern Russia after 33 others were led to safety over the weekend. The mine filled with water from an underground lake, knocking out electricity and robbing it of air as the level rose. Rescue leaders hoped to tunnel into the area where the miners were believed to be by Tuesday.
The wealthiest businessman in Russia was being held in an overcrowded Moscow jail in what appeared to be a politically motivated probe of his company. Mikhail Khodorkov-sky of Yukos, the nation's largest oil company, is charged with fraud, tax evasion, embezzlement, and forgery. But even an ideological rival, Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov, said he thought Khodorkovsky was being targeted for funding two political movements that oppose President Vladimir Putin.
Police defied a court ruling that allowed the only independent daily newspaper in Zimbabwe to resume publishing, occupying its offices and arresting 18 journalists and administrators. Two coowners of Associated Newspapers Zimbabwe also were in custody, one of them a retired Supreme Court justice who police said would not be freed until all other members of its executive board surrendered. The Daily News, shut down by President Robert Mugabe's government last month, managed to print one eight-page edition before the police intervened. It has been a frequent critic of Mugabe's hard-line rule.
