Virginia

Storm Gaston drops 11 inches of rain

The remnants of Tropical Storm Gaston battered parts of Virginia with torrential rain Monday, sending cars floating down streets and stranding people in downtown buildings.

Gov. Mark Warner declared a state of emergency due to flooding in central Virginia, making state resources available and putting the Virginia National Guard on standby.

About 11 inches of rain fell in Richmond, causing cars to float down flooded streets and ram into the restaurant and other buildings in the Shockoe Bottom district, a popular entertainment area.

Fourteen rescues of people stranded in buildings or cars were pending Monday night, police spokeswoman Cynthia Price said. A stretch of Interstate 95 was closed and many streets were impassable, creating traffic jams that lasted from rush hour until well into the night.

No injuries were immediately reported.

Russia

Kremlin-favored candidate wins

The Russian government’s choice to lead warring Chechnya easily won a presidential election held in the shadow of last week’s terrorist destruction of two airliners, election officials said Monday. The opposition charged that voting was tainted by fraud.

Alu Alkhanov, the region’s top police official, replaces Kremlin-backed president Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated in a bomb attack in May.

Alkhanov received nearly 74 percent of the vote in Sunday’s balloting, Chechen elections commission head Abdul-Kerim Arsakhanov said.

Arsakhanov dismissed other candidates’ claims of fraud, saying there were no violations. Turnout was about 85 percent, he said, even though many polling stations appeared sparsely attended.

Jerusalem

Sharon: All settlements to be removed together

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wants all 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip evacuated at the same time instead of in three stages, officials said Monday, reflecting a major shift in tactics in his pullout plan.

Sharon’s goal is to prevent drawn-out and violent confrontations between settlers and the security forces, as well as multiple confrontations in his Cabinet.

According to his “unilateral disengagement” plan as approved in June, the Gaza settlements are to be removed in three stages by the end of September 2005. Four small West Bank settlements are also to be evacuated.

Sharon presented the new formula to his Security Cabinet on Monday. Dropping the staged pullout of Gaza is meant to stifle criticism to what would be the first time Israel has ever removed authorized settlements in the West Bank or Gaza.

Beijing

Gene bank planned to clone pandas

Chinese veterinarians have tried everything to stir lust in captive giant pandas — from showing them “panda porn” to providing stuffed models so that males could hone their seduction techniques.

On Monday, in a new bid to protect its national symbol, China said it had built the world’s biggest panda-gene bank as a repository of cells for use in cloning the animal.

Cells from 21 living pandas and five dead ones are preserved in the gene bank, in the southwestern city of Chengdu in Sichuan province, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Scientists hope to expand the bank to include cell samples of all 161 pandas living in special reserves around China, it said.

When geneticists might succeed in cloning the giant panda is unclear. Efforts have been under way since 1998, but have met repeated setbacks.