A roundup of today's other world stories in brief:
US missiles hit house in Pakistan, killing up to 20 people
ISLAMABAD- US missiles have flattened a suspected militant house in a Pakistan tribal area along the Afghan border, killing about 20 people. Anger over such attacks, which are often believed to have the tacit approval of the regime of US-backed President Pervez Musharraf, helped carry the president's opponents to victory in parliamentary elections last month.
The new legislature convenes tomorrow as Pakistan struggles with economic problems, a rising Islamic militancy and a controversial alliance with the US in its war on terror.
Seven missiles fired by an unmanned drone rained down on a sprawling mud brick compound about three miles outside Wana, the main town in South Waziristan, witnesses said.
Witnesses, state TV and intelligence officials said the destroyed building belonged to a local militant leader and Taliban sympathiser who went by the single name Noorullah. It was unclear whether he was among the dead.
- (AP)
Mugabe opponent says he is not a puppet
MUTARE- A former finance minister challenging Robert Mugabe for the presidency has denied he was a Western puppet and said such accusations were to divert attention from Zimbabwe's economic meltdown.
Simba Makoni, who analysts say poses one of Mr Mugabe's greatest tests in the election in two weeks, is running as an independent candidate after being expelled from the ruling Zanu-PF party. Mr Makoni took his election campaign yesterday to his eastern home province of Manicaland, where he addressed a rally of about 3,000 people in Mutare.
Mr Mugabe has denounced opponents, including rival Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai, as charlatans, Western puppets, witches and political prostitutes.
- (Reuters)
Rebel threat to Chadian oil supplies
DAKAR- A Chadian rebel leader has threatened to attack Chad's southern oil-producing Doba region unless France and the United States put pressure on the president, Idriss Deby, to start a dialogue with his foes. Timane Erdimi, head of the Rally of Forces for Change, which raided the capital N'Djamena early in February with other rebels groups, yesterday said his forces could halt oil output from installations in the south pumping up to 160,000 barrels a day.
- ( Reuters)
Four killed by New York crane collapse
NEW YORK- Rescuers are searching for three people who were missing a day after a crane collapsed at a Manhattan construction site, killing four workers. Two of those missing are construction workers; the third is a woman who was reported to be inside a townhouse that was crushed, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg said yesterday at a news conference near the accident's site at 303 East 51st St. One of the construction workers killed was operating the crane from inside. Twenty-four people were injured.
- (Bloomberg)