Progress made to restart Mideast peace talks

JERUSALEM -- Israeli and Palestinian negotiators achieved significant progress Wednesday toward ending violence and resuming peace talks, completing a plan for deploying Palestinian forces in the southern Gaza Strip and aiming for a summit within two weeks between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders. And there were signals that Condoleezza Rice, the Bush administration's newly confirmed secretary of State, would be joining the peace process soon.

France arrests 11 linked to trips to Iraq to fight

PARIS -- Terror investigators arrested 11 associates of French Muslims who died as insurgents in Iraq, accusing some of preparing to join the fight against U.S.-led forces, officials said Wednesday. The French counterterrorism agency known as the DST carried out the sweep as part of its probe into a network suspected of dispatching Islamic combatants from France to Iraq. Most of those detained were in their twenties and of immigrant origin, and at least three were ready join the Iraqi insurgency, said a senior intelligence official.

Memorials mark month following tsunamis

GALLE, Sri Lanka -- Sri Lankans lit candles and chanted prayers for the dead to mark one month since the tsunami Wednesday, and mourners on a Thai island launched two new fishing boats in a first step toward rebuilding the devastated local fleet. On the hardest-hit Indonesian island of Sumatra, there were no memorials, but children went back to school and the empty desks of dead classmates. A month after killer waves swept away more than 140,000 lives and ravaged coastlines around the Indian Ocean, survivors quietly remembered the tragedy and carried on with the struggle to rebuild their lives.

Sudanese air force bombs people in Darfur

CAIRO, Egypt -- The Sudanese air force bombed villagers in South Darfur on Wednesday, observers from the African Union reported, and an international aid organization said casualties were inflicted. "It is a major cease-fire violation," said the senior AU political officer for Sudan, Jean Baptiste Natama. Darfur rebels have often accused the government of using its air force against civilians, and Khartoum has usually denied such charges. Aerial bombardments are rarely confirmed by the African Union, which has about 1,400 cease-fire monitors and protection troops in the western Sudan region, where violence persists in spite of two cease fire agreements.

Alleged killer dreamed of government overthrow

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- The man accused of murdering filmmaker Theo van Gogh dreamed of replacing the Dutch government with an Islamic theocracy, and was supported by a network of like-minded fanatics, prosecutors said Wednesday at the first public hearing in his case. The suspect, Amsterdam native Mohammed Bouyeri, 26, did not appear at the pretrial hearing, but his attorney said Bouyeri wants to "be held accountable for his actions" and sees them as part of a religious war.

Police free four British Guantanamo detainees

LONDON -- Four British men who spent up to three years in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay and then were held by British police for a day were released Wednesday without charge. Moazzam Begg, Feroz Abbasi, Martin Mubanga and Richard Belmar were returned to Britain on Tuesday and arrested under the Terrorism Act. Metropolitan police questioned the four most of the day Wednesday but announced shortly after 9 p.m. that no charges would be filed.