World

With President Bush about to deliver a major speech on support for the war in Iraq, a major new offensive by more than 1,000 US and Iraqi troops swung into action to flush out terrorists in volatile Anbar Province. But as it did, terrorists in Baghdad exploded a car bomb that killed a Shiite member of parliament, his son, and three bodyguards. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack. Another legislator was assassinated last April.

With hundreds of supporters behind him, Egypt's leading challenger to President Hosni Mubarak pleaded not guilty to forging signatures on his party's application for official recognition. The politically charged trial in Cairo of Ayman Nour then became chaotic as defense attorneys argued so loudly that the judge adjourned the proceedings until Thursday. His case has raised tensions between Egypt and the US, which is pressing Mubarak's government to open the political process to reform.

Thirteen men who had been acquitted in the gang-raping of a Pakistani villager were ordered rearrested and denied bail by the Supreme Court. The case has drawn global attention to the treatment of women in the deeply conservative Muslim society. The victim, Mukhtar Mai, had appealed to the justices Monday, asking that the freeing five of the men by a lower court in March be reversed. The other eight, all members of a local council that allegedly ordered the rape as punishment for her brother's sexual misconduct, were acquitted three years ago.

Despite the fierce opposition of religious leaders and conservative legislators, Canada's Parliament appeared certain Tuesday night to pass a bill legalizing same-sex marriage. The Liberal Party government has defended the measure as necessary because courts in eight of the nation's 10 provinces have ruled that banning the practice violates the Canadian charter on rights and freedoms. Passage would make Canada only the third country, after Belgium and the Netherlands, to sanction homosexual unions.

Billions of dollars worth of research funding and 10,000 new jobs were expected to follow the selection of France as the site of an experimental nuclear fusion reactor. The six-nation project aims to duplicate the way the sun produces energy and would use seawater as fuel to provide a potentially inexhaustible source of low-cost electricity.