■ United States
Alleged militant aide caught
The US military in Iraq has detained a US citizen who is thought to be a top aide to wanted Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The man, who has dual US and Jordanian citizenship, was seized following a raid on a Baghdad home late last year. He is believed to be the first US citizen caught in connec-tion with Iraq's two-year-old insurgency. Lieutenant Colonel Guy Rudisill, spokes-man for detainee affairs, said he had no details on the man's age or where he was from in the US. He said he was born in Jordan and received US citizenship later, but it was not known when.
■ Zimbabwe
MDC makes election gains
Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) yesterday made a strong early showing in elections, taking 25 out of 120 contested seats compared to four for President Robert Mugabe's ruling party, the electoral commission said. The MDC won seats in its urban strongholds of Harare, Zimbabwe's second city of Bulawayo and Mutare near the border with Mozambique following voting on Thursday that elections officials said had been peaceful. Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union -- Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) won three seats in rural areas and one in Harare, chief elections officer Lovemore Sekerami said.
■ United States
Berger pleads guilty
Sandy Berger, a national security adviser to former US president Bill Clinton, has agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge and give up his security clear-ance for three years for removing classified material from a government archive, the Justice Department said on Thursday. Berger was often mentioned as a possible secretary of state in a Kerry presidency. But he quit the campaign abruptly after accusations surfaced that he had removed classif-ied material from the National Archives. The material involved an assess-ment of terrorist threats in 2000.
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