Jerusalem

In a challenge to Mahmoud Abbas, president-elect of the Palestinian Authority, Islamic bombers yesterday killed a Jewish settler and wounded three Israeli soldiers with homemade explosives laid on a settlement boundary road in the Gaza Strip.

Israel officials, however, said the attack would not affect plans for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to meet soon with Abbas. A date for their talks has not been set.

The explosion took place midmorning on the edge of the settlement of Morag in southern Gaza. The blast wrecked an army jeep, wounded three soldiers and killed a civilian construction engineer from a nearby settlement who was riding with them. Two Palestinian fighters from Islamic Jihad were killed by troops in separate shootouts a short time later.

Islamic Jihad said the attack was meant to demonstrate its adamant opposition to any letup in the confrontation with Israel. Abbas, who was elected Sunday to replace the late Yasser Arafat, has urged a halt to the armed struggle and says he wants to negotiate with Israel for a peace accord.

In the northern West Bank village of Karawat Bani Zeid, Israeli forces shot and killed two men it said were wanted Hamas fighters.

Sydney, Australia

Wildfire contained; nine dead, three missing

Firefighters contained a wildfire that killed nine people and left three others missing, the nation's deadliest blaze in more than two decades, officials said today.

The fire, which started Monday, has consumed about 358,300 acres of grass and farmland on South Australia state's Eyre Peninsula, 250 miles west of Adelaide.

Eight victims — including two children aged 4 and 2 — burned to death in cars as they tried to flee the blaze Tuesday and another woman was found dead in her home yesterday, police spokeswoman Kylie Walsh said. Three others were missing and feared dead, she said.

Cape Town, South Africa

Thatcher's son pleads guilty

Sir Mark Thatcher pleaded guilty today to unwittingly helping to finance a foiled coup plot in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea in exchange for a fine and a suspended jail sentence.

Thatcher, the son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, will pay a $506,000 fine in a deal that lets him leave South Africa to rejoin his family in the United States. If he does not pay the fine, he faces a five-year prison sentence with a further four years suspended, Judge Abe Motala said in the Cape High Court.

Thatcher's U.S.-born wife, Diane, took their two children to the United States shortly after his arrest but returned to Cape Town to be with him.

Thatcher was arrested Aug. 25 on suspicion of violating South Africa's anti-mercenary laws, designed to crush an industry that has exported military professionals willing to sell their lethal expertise across the continent.

Prosecutors allege that Thatcher, who has lived in South Africa for the past eight years, was one of the key financiers of the coup plot.

Beijing

U.S. official gets chilly reception

China's commerce minister told Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans yesterday that the American's four-year tenure has been only 70 percent successful. The minister also said he regrets that Washington hasn't granted China a trade status that would lessen scrutiny of Chinese export prices.

The pointed comments by Commerce Minister Bo Xilai came as Evans, who is to leave office shortly, began a three-day visit aimed at pressing China to do more to stop rampant product piracy.

A visibly uncomfortable Evans responded with surprise.

"Oh, hey, that's almost flunking," he said. "That's almost failure."

Later, Evans told The Associated Press that Bo meant the comment as praise.

"You know, his answer to me was that Deng Xiaoping only gave himself a grade of 70 percent, so he said he was complimenting me on a job well done," Evans said. Deng was considered China's paramount leader until his death in 1997.

Tehran, Iran

Victim's family pardons woman

A woman who spent seven years on death row in Iran has been spared execution by the family of the police chief she stabbed to death and sexually mutilated for trying to rape her.

Afsaneh Nowrouzi's death sentence raised an outcry from activists and drew the attention of international groups who sought to overturn the order.

This week, after mediation by the judiciary, the family of Behzad Moghaddam agreed to accept compensation of $62,500 instead of Nowrouzi's execution.

In 1997, Nowrouzi killed Moghaddam, the police chief on Kish island in the Persian Gulf. Her lawyer said she also cut off his penis and placed it on his chest, a previously confidential detail that will be sure to shock this conservative country — where even talking about sex is taboo.

The court rejected her self-defense claim, convicting her of murder and sentencing her to death. She has been held in a prison in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas ever since.

Quetta, Pakistan

Troops regain control of gas plant

More than 2,000 troops took control of one of Pakistan's major natural-gas plants and shut it down after renegade tribesmen fired hundreds of rockets, blowing up a pipeline and triggering clashes that have killed eight people in the past five days, officials said yesterday.

Tribesmen frequently target security forces and gas facilities to demand higher royalties from gas extracted from their territory, according to the government.

Since Friday, attackers have fired 14,000 rounds of small-arms fire, 435 mortars and up to 60 rockets at the plant in Sui, where 22 percent of the natural gas supplied to Pakistan comes from, Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said in Islamabad.

Also

Cubans on trial: Twenty-three Cubans who crashed a hijacked bus through the gates of the Mexican Embassy in Havana to seek asylum three years ago went on trial yesterday, facing prison sentences of up to 12 years. The men commandeered a bus and smashed their way into the Mexican mission Feb. 27, 2002, seeking to leave Cuba. Cuban special forces entered the compound 30 hours later at the request of Mexican diplomats and arrested the asylum-seekers.