World
The British military said it completed its withdrawal from the southern Iraqi city of Basra on Monday, relocating forces from a palace in the city to a base at the airport on the oil hub's outskirts. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown emphasized that this was an organized, preplanned move and not a defeat.
Felix, a Category 5 hurricane, is projected to skirt Honduras's coastline on Tuesday before slamming into Belize on Wednesday. On Sunday, residents of Aruba, Curacao, and Bonaire in the southern Caribbean expressed relief that the storm did far less damage than anticipated when it grazed the islands.
The Islamic Jihad militant group claimed responsibility Monday for a Palestinian rocket that landed next to a crowded day- care center in Sderot, Israel, but did not injure anyone. Parents, already angry over the government's failure to protect them and their children in this frequently targeted southern city near the Gaza Strip, pulled their children out of school on the second day of classes.
Nepali police searched pedestrians and vehicles in Kathmandu Monday, looking for clues after three bombs exploded almost simultaneously a day earlier, killing two people and wounding 26 others. The attacks were the first in the capital city since a decade-long Maoist civil war ended more than a year ago.
A Thai court issued arrest warrants Monday for former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his wife over their alleged violations of stock-trading laws. Thaksin, who is living abroad, has denied all allegations against him and has said he will not return to Thailand until after new elections are held at the end of the year.
Child labor is a growing problem in China, with a large number of of children younger than 16 entering the labor market each year, sometimes even forced to work as slaves, according to the Hong Kong-based China Labor Bulletin. The report indicates that no accurate figures are available but that estimates on the numbers of runaways and middle-school dropouts range into the hundreds of thousands.
Rain and cooler weather were expected to move into southern Greece this week, helping firefighters to extinguish any remaining blazes after three major forest fires in the drought-stricken area were put out. Over a 10-day period, an estimated 4,000 people saw their homes destroyed and 65 people lost their lives.
Dozens of Muslim clerics have issued an edict against the construction of Indonesia's first nuclear power plant on seismically charged Java island, saying the potential dangers out weigh the benefits. The world's most populous Muslim nation, with an estimated 200 million believers, is scheduled to break ground on the new facility in 2010.
In his first annual state-of-the-nation address, Mexican President Felipe Calderón blasted the United States for immigration policies that have divided families and slowed the amount of money sent home by Mexicans living north of the border.
Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf is expected to make a final attempt to seal a power-sharing deal early this week with exiled former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, a senior official said Monday.
Israel has the highest percentage of preserved land in the Mediterranean region, according to a new survey by the IUCN-World Conservation Union. Israel sets aside 16 percent of its land for nature preserves, national parks, farmlands, and forests, compared with 11.7 percent for France.
