Angola

LUANDA — Gunmen fired a missile at a passenger bus and then sprayed the vehicle with gunfire, killing at least 50 people, including several children, news reports said Monday.

Australia

CANBERRA — Australia's opposition Labor Party will not change the country's tough immigration laws if it wins elections later this year because a tough line is the will of the people, spokesman Con Sciacca said on Monday.

Bangladesh

DHAKA — Bangladesh's former military ruler and president Hossain Mohammad Ershad said Monday his Jatiya Party would win enough seats in October's parliamentary polls to be able to dictate power.

China

BEIJING — Chinese President Jiang Zemin will visit North Korea Sept. 3-5 the official Xinhua news agency said on Monday in China's first official announcement of the visit. Jiang would travel to Beijing's old Communist ally at the invitation of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, Xinhua quoted Yu Hongjun, spokesman for the International Department of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee, as saying.

Comoros

MORONI— A military committee that took power in the breakaway Comoran island of Anjouan earlier this month nominated one of its members, Mohamed Bacar, as head of state Monday, local radio reported.

Estonia

TALLINN — Estonia's parliament, meeting to elect the country's second post-Soviet president, failed to pick a winner in the first round of voting on Monday. Electoral commission head Heiki Sibul told the 100 MPs present that neither former Prime Minister Andres Tarand nor opposition candidate Peeter Kreitzberg gained the 68 votes necessary to win the presidential election. Sibul said 38 MPs voted in favor of Tarand and 40 for Kreitzberg.

Germany

DRESDEN — A German prosecutor investigating a triple suicide said on Monday three teenage boys who handcuffed themselves together and jumped to their deaths off the historic Goetzschtal bridge were believed to be devil worshippers.

India

NEW DELHI — Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee came under fire in parliament on Monday for saying he was confident that a bitter row over building a Hindu temple in northern India would be resolved by next March.

Opposition lawmakers said Vajpayee appeared to have made the statement with an eye on provincial elections in the key state of Uttar Pradesh early next year where the disputed site is located.

Indonesia

JAKARTA — Two earthquakes rocked parts of Indonesia on Monday, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage. A magnitude 6 temblor struck at 9:16 a.m. and was centered in the Maluku Sea, about 60 miles west of the island of Ternate. Eight hours earlier, a quake with a magnitude of 5.2 was felt on Sumatra island, some 300 miles northwest of Jakarta.

Nepal

KATMANDU— A first round of peace talks between Nepal's government and Maoist rebels to end five years of bloodshed in the Himalayan kingdom could begin later this week, a government source said on Monday.

Pakistan

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan's government welcomes talks between President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in New York next month, saying it wants to resolve the uneasy neighbors' long-standing dispute over Kashmir.

Sri Lanka

COLOMBO — Sri Lankan troops killed 16 Tamil Tiger rebels in a brief weekend offensive, taking the official death toll from a week of clashes to more than 60, military officials said on Monday.

Ukraine

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KIEV — Three Ukrainian coal miners injured in an underground methane gas explosion this month have died from their burns, bringing the death toll in the tragedy to 52, the Emergencies Ministry said on Monday.

DONETSK — Police in Ukraine have arrested a man suspected of killing an investigative reporter, an official said on Monday, but declined to speculate on the motive for the latest in a string of attacks on journalists.

Vietnam

HANOI — Authorities in Vietnam's Mekong Delta have evacuated tens of thousands of people from flooded areas, official media reported on Monday. The Quan Doi Nhan Dan (People's Army) newspaper said more than 6,700 families — an estimated 33,500 people — had been moved.

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