New York City: Poll finds division on making Sept. 11 national holiday

Americans are divided about whether Sept. 11 should be a national holiday like Veterans Day or Memorial Day, according to a new poll.

Support for a national holiday on the date that terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside Washington has slipped a bit since March, according to a CNN-Time poll released Sunday. While 44 percent favor the idea, 51 percent opposed it, down from a 48-48 split in March.

The telephone poll of 1,004 adults was conducted Wednesday and Thursday and has an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Israel: Weekend death toll at 13

Israeli soldiers, saying they had been warned of an attack, shot and killed four Palestinians near a Jewish settlement’s vineyard in the West Bank on Sunday. The shootings brought the weekend Palestinian death toll to 13, including two children and several other civilians.

Senior Israeli officials apologized for the loss of civilian lives, while Palestinians and some Israelis charged the army has lost its sense of restraint in its drive to crush the Palestinian uprising.

Other weekend violence included a missile attack by Israeli helicopters that killed a militant and four civilians, a gunbattle that killed the son of a local militant leader, and the shooting death of a Palestinian who infiltrated a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, shooting and wounding two Israelis.

Netherlands: Four to appear in court for alleged terror plots

Stolen passports and videotapes of Osama bin Laden are among prosecution evidence against four men summoned to appear in court today for allegedly plotting terrorist attacks against U.S. targets in France and Belgium.

Two Algerians, a Frenchman and a Dutchman are accused of running a terrorist support network out of a Rotterdam apartment to assist in strikes against the American Embassy in Paris and a U.S. munitions depot in Belgium.

Today, prosecutors will set out the broad lines of their case and request three more months to complete investigations, according to spokeswoman Pollyan Spoon of the Rotterdam district attorney’s office.

Berlin: Rainstorms hit flood areas

Areas of Germany hit hard by last month’s flooding were back under water Sunday after rainstorms deluged the east of the country and parts of Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Poland.

The overnight downpour flooded Dresden, Chemnitz and other parts of the German state of Saxony, where thousands of people are still cleaning up from the overflowing Elbe River.

In Switzerland, three people died in a house buried by a landslide set off by flooding.

In southwestern Poland, dozens of people were evacuated from their homes Sunday after torrential rain swelled mountain rivers and flooded villages, firefighters said.

Poland hadn’t been affected by the high water that caused billions in damage across Europe last month.