World Digest
Blair to undergo heart procedure

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The 51-year-old prime minister said the procedure will involve local anesthetic and will not affect his job.

"It's a sort of fluttering. It doesn't stop you working, and indeed I've been working the last couple of months since it happened," he said last night, just hours after appearing onstage for the closing ceremony of his Labour Party's annual convention.

Blair has had his toughest two years as prime minister, facing intense opposition — not least from within his own party — to his support for the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

Blair will be sedated during the 2-1/2-hour procedure, called a catheter ablation, for a heart condition caused by rapid electrical activity in the upper parts of the heart and results in a sometimes irregular, rapid heartbeat. The procedure involves inserting a catheter through the groin and up to the heart, where radio-frequency energy is used to kill off the cells conducting the extra impulses.

Abuja, Nigeria

Truce seems to hold for talks with rebels

A tentative truce between militia fighters and government troops in Nigeria's oil-rich south appeared to be holding yesterday as the two sides held a second round of talks in the capital, officials said.

Moujahid Dokubo-Asari, who leads the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force, met with President Olusegun Obasanjo to press his demands for increased autonomy and control over oil resources in the Niger Delta, an aide to the militia leader said on condition of anonymity. The two sides agreed Wednesday to temporarily halt hostilities.

The militia group threatened Monday to target foreign oil firms and their international workers starting today, Nigeria's 44th anniversary of independence from Britain. The announcement helped push crude oil prices to the historic peak of over $50 per barrel in global markets.

Gonaives, Haiti
 
U.N. rebuffs rebels trying to enter city

Rebel fighters tried to deliver food aid and organize their own security patrols in Gonaives, but were turned away by U.N. peacekeepers who said their weapons weren't welcome in a city struggling to cope with massive devastation from Tropical Storm Jeanne.

The peacekeepers sent back scores of rebels who came to Gonaives on Wednesday with three truckloads of food aid because they were armed, said rebel leader Remissainthe Ravix, a former colonel in the disbanded Haitian army.

Also yesterday, hundreds of Haitians ran for cover as gunfire erupted during a march demanding the return of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, leaving three dead in clashes that underscored the tensions in a nation working to recover from the floods.

Nearly two weeks after the floods, the death toll had climbed above 1,550 with 900 more missing, many of them presumed dead. An estimated 200,000 of the city's 250,000 residents are homeless. Hundreds remain hungry.

Tokyo

Protester burns car outside Parliament

A man drove a burning car up to an entrance gate at Japan's lower house of Parliament yesterday to protest the status of talks over people abducted to North Korea years ago, police said. No injuries were reported.

A Tokyo Metropolitan Police spokesman said authorities arrested the driver, who they identified as Mitsuyoshi Hasegawa, 54. He claimed to be the former chairman of an extreme rightist group, the Japanese People's Union, said Akihiro Sakita, a police spokesman.

Japan is negotiating with North Korea for more information on Japanese citizens kidnapped by the reclusive communist regime.

In 2002, North Korea admitted kidnapping 13 Japanese and said eight of them had died. Pyongyang released the five survivors.

Amsterdam

British flight delayed after bomb threat

Dutch police gave the "all-clear" yesterday after a British Airways flight from Berlin to London landed in Amsterdam's Schiphol airport due to a bomb threat, the third against a European airliner this week.

The Airbus A319, with 118 passengers and six crew on board, was shadowed by two F-16 fighters after its pilot requested an unscheduled landing at one of Europe's busiest international airports in the early afternoon.

Two Greek Olympic Airlines planes flying from Athens to New York have been diverted to Britain and Ireland respectively this week after bomb threats. Both turned out to be hoaxes.

Also

A bomb exploded today in central Beirut, wounding a former Lebanese Cabinet minister and killing his driver, officials said. The explosion occurred near the American Community School and the International College, both U.S. organizations, the officials said. They said the bomb exploded as Economy Minister Marwan Hamadeh's car was driving past.