■ Kuwait
Police bust militant cell
Kuwait beefed up security yesterday after police busted a Saudi-style suspected Islamist militant cell in a three-hour shootout that left a Saudi gunman dead and two policemen wounded. Three Kuwaiti militants were arrested in Saturday's gunbattle as security forces hunted several others who fled after special forces backed by armored vehicles and helicopters stormed a house in Umm Al-Haiman, south of the capital. Interior ministry undersecretary General Nasser al-Othman put most of the emirate's security forces on full alert while a security source said that at least two of the militants at large were Saudi nationals.
■ United Kingdom
Fraudster voted best TV MP
When British TV bosses devised an innovative political talent show to find a new would-be MP, Rodney Hylton-Potts was probably not what they had in mind as an eventual winner. The convicted fraudster won the show's public vote with a manifesto promising the mandatory castration of pedophiles, legalizing all drugs and deporting immigrants so as to reduce Britain's population by 20 million. The program, Vote For Me, was intended to boost flagging public interest in politics by subjecting would-be lawmakers to public scrutiny.
■ Croatia
Rival campaigns hard
Croatia's President Stipe Mesic was being challenged yesterday by a determined rival, Cabinet minister Jadranka Kosor, in a runoff election to chose the president that could lead this former Yugoslav country to join the EU. Mesic, 70, praised by many at home and abroad for moving the country closer to the West, missed outright re-election by just one percentage point, receiving about 49 percent of the votes in the first round on Jan. 2. Kosor, 51, the minister in charge of families and war veterans, came in second with 20 percent. She has since waged a fervent campaign t as she seeks to become Croatia's first woman president.
■ United Kingdom
Troops damaging Babylon
The British Museum says US-led coalition forces in Babylon have crushed part of the ancient Iraqi city's 2,600-year-old brick paved streets with their tanks and used soil containing archaeological fragments to fill sand bags. The museum is concerned that US-led troops, including US Marines and the Polish-led force who have occupied the ancient Mesopotamian capit-al, have inflicted widespread damage to the ancient center of civilization, according to a report released on Saturday. "This is tantamount to establishing a military camp around the Great Pyramid in Egypt or around Stonehenge in Britain," wrote the report's author, John Curtis, the curator of the museum's Near East department.
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