Ivory Coast

Junta members held in assassination plot

Two top members of Ivory Coast’s deposed military junta were arrested for allegedly participating in what authorities said Friday was a plot to assassinate President Laurent Gbagbo, raising fears that civil war may reignite.

A top government official said on condition of anonymity that the former junta leaders were among more than 60 people detained this week in Ivory Coast and France, where authorities said they blocked the assassination attempt by arresting 10 people in Paris.

The alleged plot involved attacking Gbagbo’s convoy with a rocket launcher as he traveled Wednesday or Thursday to his presidential palace in this former French colony, the official said.

Canada

Inuit to gain control of northeast territory

A new Inuit territory nearly as big as South Carolina would be established in northeastern Canada under an agreement announced Friday, completing decades of government negotiations with the people commonly known as Eskimos.

Labrador’s Inuit would govern a 29,000-square-mile territory to be called Nunatsiavut, which means “our beautiful land” in the Inuktitut language, under the agreement, which still requires ratification by the 5,000-member Labrador Inuit Assn.

The Labrador Inuit would receive a $100 million payout in government money and another $111 million for modifications. The deal was reached by Labrador’s Inuit leaders, the federal government and the Newfoundland and Labrador provincial government.

Other Inuit groups across Canada already have similar deals. The biggest created Nunavut, the Inuit homeland the size of western Europe, in 1999 in what formerly was the eastern half of the Northwest Territories.

Mongolia

Roman Catholic bishop a first for nation

A Filipino priest was installed Friday as Mongolia’s first Roman Catholic bishop, leading a Catholic community of less than 200 people in a largely Buddhist nation regarded as important to Vatican missionary work in Asia.

Bishop Wenceslaw Padilla, who has been a missionary in Mongolia since 1992, was installed in a ceremony attended by about 1,000 people in the Mongolian capital’s new cathedral — a circular building in the shape of a traditional Mongol tent.

Pope John Paul II considered visiting Mongolia to personally ordain Padilla, but the Vatican dropped that plan last month.

The ceremony was led by Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, head of the Vatican’s missionary arm, and dozens of missionary priests wearing cream-colored silk robes trimmed in red.

London

Transportation resumes after power outage

London Underground trains rolled normally Friday morning as the city returned to work a day after a blackout in the British capital stranded hundreds of thousands of commuters.

Thursday night’s 40-minute outage, which trapped thousands of people in the trains for up to 90 minutes, could have had “horrifying consequences” if it had struck during a recent heat wave, instead of on a chilly, wet evening, Mayor Ken Livingstone said.

EDF Energy, which handles power transmission for the affected areas of London, said electricity went out around 6:20 p.m. and came back on at 7 p.m. The outages appeared to be confined to south London and Kent, a county southeast of the city.

Livingstone’s office said the blackout affected about 250,000 subway passengers and thousands of other people on trains, roads and in buildings. Livingstone said a lack of investment in Britain’s electricity network likely caused the power cut.

Geneva

WTO diplomats continue work on drug pact

Discouraged World Trade Organization diplomats made another attempt Friday to close a deal allowing poor countries to import cheap copies of patented drugs for killer diseases like AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

By Friday evening, they decided to take a break and reconvene this morning.

The representatives had nearly reached a deal by 1 a.m. Friday after a marathon session but it fell through minutes later. That failure was a surprise, because the same officials earlier accepted the agreement after the United States ended an eight-month holdout.

Negotiators arriving for Friday afternoon’s meeting said the deal stumbled over demands by some countries to make statements before the WTO’s General Council formally approves the deal. Those statements can be used to make “reservations,” or spell out limits countries will place on their adherence to the accord.