Palestinians and others decried the attack
A Massive Blow to Peace
Tensions rose inexorably in the Middle East after Israeli helicopters launched a missile attack on the West Bank offices of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, killing eight. Two of the dead — Jamal Mansour, the top Hamas official in the West Bank, and his deputy Jamal Salim — were decapitated by the missiles, which plowed through the third-floor offices. Israel blames their network for terrorist attacks that killed 37 Israelis. Two Palestinian children, brothers aged five and eight, were killed by shrapnel in the street below the offices. As Hamas vowed revenge for the attack, Israel defended its policy of targeting Palestinian militants even during the so-called cease-fire. Israeli army spokesman Brigadier-General Ron Kitrey said, "We had all the justification in the world, in the sense of ‘If a man comes to kill you, rise early and kill him first.'" In Nablus a Palestinian Authority security court sentenced four Palestinian men to death for allegedly collaborating with the Israelis in the killing of a senior Fatah official in December and a Hamas activist last month.
UNITED KINGDOM
Bomb Blast
As politicians from all the Northern Ireland parties discussed the latest plan to save the faltering peace process, a dissident separatist group demonstrated its resistance to compromise by detonating a car bomb in West London. The device, containing 40 kg of homemade explosive, went off near an Underground station and busy bars at midnight Thursday, injuring seven people. Police believe the bomb to be the work of the Real I.R.A., the group that killed 29 people with a car bomb in Omagh in 1998.
THE NETHERLANDS
Guilty as Charged
General Radislav Krstic was found guilty of genocide at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague. The court sentenced the Bosnian Serb general to 46 years in prison for the July 1995 murder of nearly 8,000 men and boys in the "safe haven" of Srebrenica. Krstic, who pleaded not guilty to all charges, told the court that he knew of the massacres but was powerless to prevent them. He was second-in-command of Bosnian Serb troops that overran Srebrenica while the town was officially under the protection of U.N. forces.
MACEDONIA
One Agreement
Negotiators overcame the sensitive question of language in talks aimed at settling the five-month conflict in Macedonia. Ethnic Macedonian leaders agreed to accept Albanian as an official language in areas where 20% of the population is Albanian, on condition that other matters under discussion could also be agreed. For ethnic Albanians, who make up about one-third of the population, recognition of their language is a vital symbol of their status.
POLAND
Vistula in Flood
Polish soldiers saved several villages from the floodwaters of the river Vistula by blowing a 50-m wide gap in a dike at Braciejowice, 170 km southeast of Warsaw. At least 27 people have died in floods following weeks of storms in the south of the country, while more than 16,000 people were evacuated from their homes and thousands of hectares of farmland were inundated.
IRAN
Murders Multiply
A week after police in the holy city of Mashhad arrested a man for a string of prostitute murders, two more women were killed in copycat slayings. The arrested man, Saeed Hanaei, confessed to police that he had killed 16 women for "the sake of God," and was hailed by religious conservatives as a national hero. Last week two Tehran prostitutes were murdered in the same way Hanaei killed: they were strangled with their Islamic headscarves.
THAILAND
A Narrow Escape
By the slimmest of majorities, the 15-member Constitutional Court in Bangkok cleared Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra of corruption charges. The court rejected a finding by an anti-corruption commission last year that Thaksin had intentionally concealed millions in shares owned by himself and his wife but held by proxies, including some of their servants. Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai party won a landslide victory in January, when the case against him was already well-known.
TAIWAN
The Ravages of Typhoon Toraji
The eighth, and most ferocious, storm to batter Taiwan this year killed at least 86 people, with 132 missing. Typhoon Toraji unleashed torrential rain across eastern and central parts of the island, triggering flash floods and mudslides. Landslides caused most of the deaths. Rescuers found the body of one 10-year-old girl 3 m underground. Scientists believe that much of the mountainous central region is still unstable from the 1999 earthquake that killed nearly 2,500 people, and fear that soil erosion has been hastened further by overdevelopment in the area.
PHILIPPINES
Beheadings
At least five of 30 Filipinos kidnapped by Abu Sayyaf guerrillas last week were beheaded because they reportedly collaborated with the military. The rebels seized the hostages from a village on the island of Basilan, where they are also holding around 20 hostages taken in May from the Dos Palmas resort in Palawan. That group includes two American missionaries and another U.S. national the rebels claimed to have beheaded.
GERMANY
Gay, Proud and 'Married'
Gay campaigners celebrated new German legislation allowing same-sex "marriages." Though the new law does not give homosexual couples the same tax advantages and welfare benefits as heterosexuals, gays will be able to share a surname and have the same inheritance rights. Among the first to take advantage of the new law were Angelika Baldow and Gudrun Pannier, who became Frau and Frau Pannier in Berlin's Schöneberg town hall.
CHINA
We Won't Be Gagged
China's press showed a new willlingness to challenge communist party propaganda in reporting a mining accident in Guangxi province. Despite official denials that any casualties had resulted from a flooding incident three weeks ago in the Longquan tin mine, stories began to appear in official papers that up to 400 miners were trapped underground. Journalists who first heard of the accident say they were gagged by local authorities but passed the story to newspapers outside the province, which printed it.
UNITED STATES
Anti-Arctic Vote
In a major victory for the Bush Administration the House of Representatives voted for legislation that will allow drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The government pushed for approval of the measure, which it insists is needed to reduce American dependence on imported oil, in the face of criticism from environmentalists who fear damage to the area's fragile ecosystem.
CANADA
Going to Pot
Canadians suffering from chronic conditions and terminal illnesses are now legally permitted to use marijuana to relieve their pain. The new rule allows people meeting strict criteria to use supplies of the drug, some of which may be grown in a government-sanctioned operation at an abandoned mine near Flin Flon, in northern Manitoba. Patients' groups have largely welcomed the new law, though the Canadian Medical Association opposes it, saying there has not been enough scientific research for accurate prescription of the drug.