Israeli military cancels terror alert\nJERUSALEM - Israeli police raided a West Bank mosque on Wednesday, capturing two Palestinians who allegedly were planning to attack a school. One was reportedly wearing an explosives belt.\nSecurity forces went on high alert in the northern Israeli towns of Afula and Beit Shean after what the army said were "numerous" warnings of Palestinian attacks. One main road was closed and roadblocks posted on others.\nThe restrictions were lifted after Israeli troops raided the mosque in the West Bank village of Bardala, nine miles south of Beit Shean. Tadji Sawafta, a local official, said two men were arrested.\nDore Gold, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said those arrested planned a suicide bombing in a school in the Israeli town of Yokneam. He said it "demonstrates the necessity of Israel's ongoing security measures, including the completion of its security fence," a barrier Israel is building which has drawn criticism because its route cuts deep into the West Bank to encircle Israeli settlements.
\nARUSHA, Tanzania - A U.N. tribunal convicted and sentenced a radio news director and a newspaper editor to life imprisonment Wednesday for their role in promoting the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the first trial of media workers by an international court in more than 50 years.\nA senior executive at the radio station, Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines, was also sentenced to 27 years in prison for his role in the government-orchestrated massacres of minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus that killed 500,000 people.\nThe convictions by International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda were the first for broadcasters and publications promoting crimes against humanity since the Nuremberg trials of Nazi propagandists following World War II.
Iraqi council head demands new vote\nBAGHDAD - The head of the Iraqi Governing Council renewed his demand Wednesday that a proposed transitional legislature be elected by Iraqi voters, a move opposed by U.S. occupation officials.\nAbdel-Aziz al-Hakim, a Shiite Muslim cleric who has recently been a vocal critic of American plans for restoring sovereignty to Iraqis, holds the rotating presidency of the U.S.-appointed council for the month of December.\nHis assumption of the post could point to rockier relations with American administrators. It also highlights the transformation of Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Iraq's Shiite majority were oppressed under Saddam's regime, particularly religious leaders. Al-Hakim holds clerical status -- unlike Ahmad Chalabi, a secular Shiite who held the presidency earlier this year.\nA Nov. 15 agreement between the council and L. Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. administrator calls for caucuses in Iraq's 18 provinces to select the transitional legislature.\nAl-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, has insisted on a vote.
2 U.S. soldiers hurt in Afghanistan\nKANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A suspected member of the Taliban threw a grenade at a U.S. military vehicle, wounding two American soldiers in the southern city of Kandahar on Wednesday.\nSalim Khan, Kandahar's deputy police chief, said Afghan security forces chased the suspect and arrested him, but only after he threw another grenade, slightly injuring an Afghan police officer.\nThe attack came as the U.S. military expressed concern the Taliban may target the loya jirga, or grand council, which is to meet in the capital Kabul this month. Hundreds of delegates from around the country are expected to debate and ratify a new constitution, paving the way for national elections.\nA spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, told a news conference in Kabul that the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar "would like to disrupt the loya jirga." The spokesman declined to comment on a claim by Afghan President Hamid Karzai last week that Omar had been spotted recently in a mosque in northwestern Pakistan.
