Colombia

BOGOTA — The U.S. government on Monday turned $13 million over to Colombia that was acquired through the seizure of assets and properties belonging to a violent drug lord. U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Mary Lee Warren presented Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos with the check at a ceremony in Bogota. The funds will be used to improve human rights, anti-drug programs and prisons in this war-torn nation, Santos' office said.

Dominican Republic

SANTO DOMINGO — With a hard-fought election victory in hand, president-elect Leonel Fernandez prepared Monday for the challenge of pulling the Dominican Republic out of its worst economic crisis in decades.

France

PARIS — Sikh school boys must exchange their turbans for hair nets when a new law banning religious apparel in public schools takes effect in September, France's education minister said Monday, shocking representatives of the Sikh community. Education Minister Francois Fillon spoke after education officials adopted — with some misgivings — a set of guidelines to help school officials apply the law, which was enacted in March after a marathon parliament debate.

Germany

BERLIN — Pursuing a fresh push in Middle East diplomacy, U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice urged the Palestinian prime minister Monday to create security forces that can deter attacks on Israel. Rice's meeting with Ahmed Qureia aimed to underscore the Bush administration's backing for Palestinian statehood while pressing for reforms, even as Palestinians in a Gaza Strip refugee camp fled their homes, fearing a new Israeli offensive.

Israel

RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli tanks cut off the Rafah refugee camp from the rest of Gaza Monday, sending panicked residents fleeing amid fears of a major military operation. Helicopters fired missiles at the camp hours later, killing at least seven people and wounding two dozen, residents said. Early Tuesday, Palestinians said Israeli tanks and troops began digging a trench to separate one quarter of the camp from the rest. Soldiers, backed by dozens of military vehicles, searched house to house.

Italy

ROME — The first combat death of an Italian soldier in Iraq on Monday led to new pressure on Premier Silvio Berlusconi to pull out troops and distance himself from the Bush administration. The development came days before the Italian premier travels to Washington, where he is expected to meet with President Bush. Opposition leaders contended that after heavy fighting in the past three days and scattered clashes in the past weeks, the mission can no longer be described as humanitarian.

Nigeria

LAGOS — African leaders approved an emergency strategy Monday to immunize 74 million children for polio in 21 nations, U.N. officials said. The approval came amid signs that a heavily Muslim state in Nigeria is ready to abandon its boycott of the vaccine, which allowed the disease to mushroom.

Russia

VLADIKAVKAZ — Russia's most wanted fugitive, rebel warlord Shamil Basayev, has claimed responsibility for killing Chechnya's Moscow-backed leader in a bomb attack that authorities increasingly believe was an inside job. Basayev made his claim in a statement posted Monday on a rebel Web site, calling the May 9 assassination of President Akhmad Kadyrov a "small but important victory."

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Syria

DAMASCUS — A leader of a militant group that sends suicide bombers into Israel rejected Palestinian Authority proposals for a cease-fire, saying Monday that Israel was waging a "war of annihilation" against Palestinians. "Our people will not be made refugees again," the political leader of Hamas, Khaled Mashaal, told The Associated Press in an interview, referring to the displacement of Palestinians after the Middle East wars of 1948 and 1967.

Ukraine

KIEV — Ukrainian security officers have arrested two Middle Eastern men they said possessed a substance that has been touted by sellers as an ingredient in nuclear weapons and dismissed by others as a hoax. Security agents in the southern city of Odessa seized 24 pounds of a substance they said was radioactive and identified as "red mercury," a State Security Service spokesman said Monday on condition of anonymity.

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