Paris

Laura Bush pledges aid for Afghan Buddhas

First lady Laura Bush said Wednesday she would hit up some wealthy friends in Texas for money to help restore Afghanistan’s two towering Buddhas blasted to rubble last year by the Taliban.

On a tour of an Afghan exhibit at the Musee Guimet, she also called on her husband’s administration to help salvage Afghanistan’s art.

With the exhibit traveling next to Tokyo and to her own native Texas, Mrs. Bush said her friends back home would be hearing from her.

“I know a number of philanthropists in Houston who probably would be very generous in donating to a restoration of the Buddhas, and I think that’s very important,” she said.

Mrs. Bush’s aides said they did not know just whom she had in mind.

Germany

Union announces deal to end strikes

Germany’s biggest union reached a wage deal with employers Wednesday to end waves of one-day strikes in a key industrial region, a breakthrough likely to spare the country a drawn-out, damaging work stoppage.

The deal calls for a 4 percent increase for one year beginning June 1, then a 3.1 percent increase for the next six months, the union said. Workers also get a one-time payment of $110 in May.

The agreement, covering 800,000 factory workers, is expected to set the pattern nationwide.

IG Metall, which represents 2.7 million factory workers nationwide, has targeted companies in Baden-Wuerttemberg including automakers DaimlerChrysler and Porsche with rotating one-day walkouts for 10 days.

The strike, the first manufacturing strike in seven years, was extended to Berlin and the surrounding region this week.

Spain

Basque terror threat on summit averted

Spanish authorities have seized an arsenal of weapons and explosives, thereby thwarting a major terrorist attack that the Basque separatist group ETA planned to launch against an upcoming summit of Latin American and European leaders, officials said Wednesday.

Two suspected ETA members arrested on Tuesday had stashed nearly 440 pounds of explosives, along with detonators, automatic weapons and false license plates at an apartment in the center of the capital, according to the Interior Ministry’s top official for the Madrid region, Francisco Javier Ansuategui.

“These two persons didn’t want to scare,” he said. “They wanted to kill and to kill with all its consequences.”

The summit, which will bring together more than 40 leaders from Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, is to begin on Friday.

London

Luxury liner to stop trans-Atlantic service

Cunard Lines announced Wednesday that the fabled ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2 will stop providing trans-Atlantic passenger service between Britain and New York in April 2004, marking the end of an era for one of the world’s largest and fastest vessels.

The QE2, as she is popularly known, will be replaced on the venerable Southampton to New York route by the Queen Mary 2, which will become Cunard’s flagship carrier when its construction is completed late next year.

The Queen Mary 2 is billed as the world’s largest passenger vessel at 150,000 gross tons.

The QE2 will not be mothballed and turned into a museum piece for tourists. The superliner will be based in the British port of Southampton and used as a cruise ship for affluent customers traveling to the Caribbean and other destinations, Cunard officials said.