Chile
SANTIAGO — Documents allegedly showing former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet stashed a huge gold fortune at a bank in Hong Kong have turned out to be forgeries, the Chilean office of HSBC bank said Thursday.
Denmark
COPENHAGEN — A Danish court rejected a lawsuit Thursday against the newspaper that first printed controversial Prophet Muhammad cartoons. Arab politicians and intellectuals warned the verdict would widen the gap between Westerners and Muslims, but said mass protests were unlikely.
Ethiopia
ADDIS ABABA — Ethiopia acknowledged Thursday that security forces killed 193 civilians protesting election fraud last year but insisted excessive force was not used. The figure — three times an earlier official toll — had been revealed last week by a senior judge who accused the government of trying to cover up the findings.
France
PARIS — France's interior minister pledged Thursday to deploy police in buses serving some Paris suburbs, after rampaging youths seized three buses in immigrant neighborhoods and burned them after forcing passengers to leave. The overnight attacks — which caused no injuries — came just before today's one-year anniversary of three weeks of rioting that hit suburbs.
Georgia
TBILISI — A Georgian man was killed and another was wounded when they stepped on a mine Thursday in a volatile area near the breakaway province of South Ossetia, officials said.
Germany
BERLIN — Six suspects were under investigation in a scandal over photos of German soldiers posing with a skull in Afghanistan, the defense minister said Thursday, with the Afghan government saying it was "deeply saddened" over the macabre pictures.
Italy
ROME — The prime minister's office said Thursday it was "deeply upset" by reports that the Italian leader's tax returns were illegally monitored for more than two years. The ANSA and Apcom news agencies said that Milan prosecutors were investigating alleged irregular checks by tax officials and tax police. There have been more than 120 irregular checks on Premier Romano Prodi and his wife, the reports said.
Lebanon
BEIRUT — Hundreds of Spanish soldiers arrived in Beirut on Thursday to join a U.N. peacekeeping force monitoring the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah in south Lebanon.
Nicaragua
MANAGUA — Nicaragua's Congress voted Thursday to ban all abortions, including those that could save a mother's life. If signed into law by President Enrique Bolanos, the measure would eliminate a century-old exception to Nicaragua's abortion ban that permits the procedure if three doctors certify that the woman's health is at risk.
Peru
LIMA — At least 17 people were killed and 12 others were injured Thursday when a passenger bus crashed down an embankment in Peru's southern Andes, police said.
Russia
MOSCOW — An unmanned Russian cargo ship successfully latched onto the international space station Thursday after Mission Control solved a glitch that had prevented the spacecraft from delivering supplies of oxygen, water and food.
Somalia
KISMAYO — Islamic militiamen seized another town near the government's base in Somalia, but one of the group's leaders dispelled fears that an attack was imminent, saying Thursday it would attend peace talks next week in Sudan.
South Korea
SEOUL — South Korea made its first concrete move Thursday to enforce U.N. sanctions imposed on North Korea for its nuclear test, saying it will ban officials from the communist country who fall under a U.N. travel restriction and control financial transactions between the rivals.