World Digest
Gunmen kill 2 Americans in Uganda

	WILLIAM J. LIZDAS / MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL, 2001 Warren and Donna Pett were killed late Thursday after armed men wearing military uniforms raided a technical college where the couple taught near Yumbe, Uganda. The Petts had been there for about a year.
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KAMPALA, Uganda — A missionary couple from Wisconsin and a Ugandan student were killed Thursday night by gunmen at an evangelical mission college in northwestern Uganda, college officials said yesterday.

Warren and Donna Pett, both 49, former dairy farmers from Mukwonago, Wis., were killed when men in military fatigues and armed with AK-47 rifles attacked the Esther Evangelistical School of Technology, about 420 miles from Kampala.

"Buildings were burnt and other property destroyed," said William Stough, a senior official at the college, run by the African Inland Mission and the Ugandan aid group Here Is Life.

"They taught agriculture and other technical subjects at the school," Stough said, adding they had been in Yumbe for close to a year.

"They were totally and entirely dedicated to their Lord," said their son Saul in Mukwonago. "This is where he put them. We know they're home. That's the most consolation we have right now."

Ugandan army spokesman Major Shaban Bantariza said it was unlikely the Lord's Resistance Army, which slaughtered more than 200 civilians living in a refugee camp Feb. 21, was involved in the attack.

"The information we have is that this was about competition for land, that the evangelical mission wanted to build a church on land that the villagers wanted for other purposes, but this is not yet confirmed," he said.

Food, medicine delivered in rebel-held areas of Haiti

GONAIVES, Haiti — French troops fanned out from Haiti's capital yesterday to establish control in rebel-held northern Haiti and allow relief organizations to deliver food and medicine disrupted during the rebellion against Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who left the country Feb. 29.

A convoy of 150 French Legionnaires reached Gonaives, the city north of Port-au-Prince where a street gang began the armed rebellion that helped oust Aristide. Another 200 French troops arrived in Cap-Haitien, the northern port of 500,000 that is Haiti's second largest city. There was no reported resistance.
 
Rebels in Gonaives, who apparently had hidden their weapons, claimed they were ready to cooperate.

"We are going to turn over our weapons tomorrow," rebel leader Winter Etienne told reporters before jumping into a van and speeding off.

U.S. forces continued to patrol the capital of Port-au-Prince and said they were planning to deploy to the south and east. Chilean troops replaced a U.S. Marine security detail at the international airport.

Quebec joins other provinces in allowing gay marriages

TORONTO — Homosexuals have the right to wed, Quebec's top court said yesterday, making it the third Canadian province to allow same-sex marriage.

The Quebec Court of Appeal upheld a lower-court ruling that the traditional definition of marriage is discriminatory and unjustified.

Same-sex marriages have been declared legal by provincial courts in Ontario and British Columbia, and together the three provinces represent more than half of Canada's 32 million people.

Canada's Supreme Court has been asked to clarify the constitutionality of gay marriage in a nonbinding ruling due next year, and Prime Minister Paul Martin has promised to introduce a bill to legalize it.

The Quebec court case pitted some religious groups against Michael Hendricks, 62, and Rene Leboeuf, 48, who want to marry after being together for 31 years.

"The floodgates seem to be open and it looks like Canada is going to become the first North American country that has equal marriage, and this is wonderful," Hendricks said.

Dasani water to be pulled from Britain due to bromate

LONDON — Coca-Cola Co. is withdrawing its Dasani bottled water from sale in Britain after finding that samples contained higher-than-permitted levels of the chemical bromate.

The Food Standards Agency said there was no immediate risk to public health, and described Coca-Cola's decision to stop selling Dasani in Britain as "sensible." It said bromate can cause an increased cancer risk as a result of long-term exposure.

Coca-Cola, which launched Dasani in Britain last month, said the higher-than-permitted levels of bromate occurred as a result of a process aimed at adding calcium to its bottled water. The calcium is required by Britain.

A Coca-Cola spokesman said calcium is not added to U.S. Dasani.

U.N. coordinator warns of ethnic killings in Sudan

NAIROBI, Kenya — Pro-government Arab militias in western Sudan's Darfur region are carrying out systematic killings of African villagers reminiscent of the Rwandan genocide, Mukesh Kapila, U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, said yesterday.

"The only difference between Rwanda and Darfur now is the numbers of dead, murdered, tortured, raped. ... Some people are using the term ethnic cleansing to describe what is going on in Darfur, and I would say that that is not far off the mark," he said. "All the warning signs are there for ethnic cleansing."

The Sudanese government said it considered Darfur's Arab militias outlaws, and there was no comparison between the situation there and Rwanda, where in 1994 extremist Hutus killed 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 100 days.

Western insurgents say they are fighting to end years of neglect and exploitation by the Islamist government but have won none of the concessions southern rebels have gained at the negotiating table.

Also ...

A bus crashed into a truck in icy conditions in southern Finland yesterday, killing 23 people and injuring 15 in one of the worst accidents in the country's history. ... NATO-led forces set up checkpoints and ferreted out snipers yesterday to restore order in Kosovo after at least 28 people were killed in the worst ethnic clashes since the end of the province's war in 1999.

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