World

"Iraq will emerge eventually triumphant," President Saddam Hussein declared Wednesday in a defiant televised speech. "It will not succumb to, or be shaken by, the propaganda of foreign powers," he added. The address marked the anniversary of the 1968 coup that brought his Baath party to power. The Bush administration has stated it wants a "regime change" in Iraq, which it accuses of sponsoring terrorism and trying to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Morocco angrily demanded an immediate withdrawal, after Spanish forces seized a tiny, rocky island claimed by both nations in an increasingly acrimonious territorial dispute. It also protested Spain's "aggression" to the United Nations. Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio said Wednesday's pre-dawn raid, to remove a handful of Moroccans occupying the soccer-field-sized outcrop, was aimed at restoring the status quo. It came a day after the two sides had agreed to diplomatic talks.

Israeli troops killed one of the gunmen responsible for a deadly bus ambush near the West Bank settlement of Emmanuel, Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said, blaming Wednesday's attack on the Hamas militant group. The army said one Israeli soldier also died, and three were wounded during the search. Israel postponed a planned meeting with moderate Palestinian leaders as a result of the ambush, which left eight people dead.

Paraguay's President Luis Gonzalez Macchi lifted a decreed state of emergency Wednesday, saying police had restored order. Two days of violent protests left two people dead. Demonstrators across the country were demanding the president's ouster against a backdrop of soaring unemployment and poverty.

Germany's supreme court upheld a controversial "life-partnership" law that allows gay couples to enter a marriage-like contract. Bavaria and two other conservative states, Saxony and Thuringia, had claimed the measure violated constitutional protections of marriage and the family. Bavaria's leader, Edmund Stoiber, is challenging Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in the Sept. 22 parliamentary vote. An estimated 4,400 couples have registered partnerships since the law went into effect in August.