World briefs 10/21/04

U.N.: Domestic robots to surge to 4.1 million by 2007

GENEVA -- The use of robots around the home to mow lawns, vacuum floors, pull guard duty and perform other chores is set to surge sevenfold by 2007, says a new U.N. survey, which credits dropping prices for the robot boom. The increase in domestic robots coincides with record orders for industrial robots, the U.N.'s annual World Robotics Survey adds. The report says 607,000 automated domestic helpers were in use at the end of 2003, two thirds of them purchased last yearmost of them -- 570,000 -- were robot vacuum cleaners. Sales of lawn-mowing robots reached 37,000.

CIA docs show struggle to understand China under Mao

BEIJING -- The CIA is offering a rare glimpse into its successes and failures at trying to understand China during its first communist decades in a huge cache of newly declassified documents released this week in Washington. The group of 71 intelligence reports covers three decades until 1976, the year communist founder Mao Zedong died. They reflect the U.S. intelligence agency's struggle to track China's political and economic evolution, its rise as a military power and its break with its former Soviet patrons.

Suspect planned attack to destroy terrorism case files

MADRID, Spain -- A Muslim militant schemed to punish Spain with the "biggest blow of its history" -- a half-ton suicide truck bombing of the National Court aimed at killing judges investigating Islamic terror, including the Madrid train attacks, said a police intelligence. "If Spain loses three or four of its most important judges, that is worse than losing its prime minister," the report said. An estimated 220 pounds of explosives was used in the 10 backpack bombs that hit the Madrid commuter rail network March 11, killing 191 people. Al-Qaida-linked militants were blamed.

-- From wire reports