Algeria
ALGIERS — Thirty-one European tourists who vanished in the Sahara Desert are being held hostage by terrorist groups, a ranking Algerian official said Wednesday.
The official said the tourists had been located by the Algerian army. Some 5,000 Algerian troops and 300 local guides were brought in to track down the tourists.
The tourists, who had set off in seven separate groups on four-wheel drive vehicles or motorcycles, disappeared starting in mid-February. None had employed guides.
Argentina
SANTE FE — Heavy rains across northeastern Argentina have killed four people and forced tens of thousands from their homes, officials said Wednesday.
The Salado river overflowed after a week of rains, inundating this riverside city some 250 miles northeast of Buenos Aires and leaving residents without electricity and telephone service.
Colombia
BOGOTA — Colombia's highest court has stripped President Alvaro Uribe of the emergency powers he assumed last year to battle leftist rebels.
Uribe, who is in Washington and met President Bush on Wednesday, said that he would respect the court's decision, according to a statement from his office.
England
LONDON — Anyone who believes Saddam Hussein possessed no weapons of mass destruction will be left "eating some of their words" when the banned arms are found, Prime Minister Tony Blair predicted Wednesday.
Hong Kong
HONG KONG — Local health officials said here Wednesday night that a dozen patients who had seemed to recover from SARS became ill again after leaving the hospital.
In some cases, the illness returned more than two weeks after discharge, according to a medical expert here who refused to be quoted by name. It is not clear whether the patients contracted the infection a second time, or simply became ill with the same virus after seeming to recover.
Nigeria
LAGOS — Nigerian navy ships sailed Wednesday toward offshore drilling rigs where 97 foreigners — including 17 Americans — were being held after talks to resolve the 11-day hostage standoff broke off in deadlock.
About 100 disgruntled Nigerian oil workers have been holding the foreigners aboard four drilling rigs owned by Houston-based Transocean, about 20 miles off Nigeria's coast. Besides the Americans, 35 Britons and one Canadian are being held, along with about 170 Nigerian personnel.
Northern Ireland
BELFAST — Seeking to keep Northern Ireland's elections on course, Sinn Fein party leader Gerry Adams pledged Wednesday that the Irish Republican Army would not undermine the province's 1998 peace agreement and the joint Catholic-Protestant administration it created.
Russia
MOSCOW — The office of Russia's prosecutor general announced unexpectedly on Wednesday that it had closed its investigation into three apartment bombings in September 1999 that killed 243 people and wounded 1,742 others.
Agreeing with what officials have claimed from the start, the prosecutor's office announced that nine Russian and foreign Islamic fighters carried out the bombings — two in Moscow and one in the southern city of Volgodonsk — presumably to advance the separatist movement in Chechnya.
South Africa
JOHANNESBURG — The South African government softened its stand on Wednesday on a new mining law that had drawn howls of protest from the mining industry, the mainstay of the country's economy.
The South African finance minister, Trevor Manuel, told reporters after a meeting with industry leaders that though the government intended to go ahead with a plan to assess royalties on all mineral extractions, the details would be open to negotiation.
Venezuela
CARACAS — Uruguay said Wednesday it had granted asylum to two former Venezuelan military officers accused of participating in a coup against President Hugo Chavez last year.
Both entered the Uruguayan Embassy in Caracas early Wednesday, claiming they were being "persecuted and don't trust the judicial system," said retired Navy Adm. Oscar Betancourt.
Army Capts. Carlos Blondell and Otto Gebauer were granted asylum, Uruguay's foreign ministry said in a statement. They face treason charges for allegedly keeping Chavez in custody during the coup.