Malaysia

PM calls elections

Malaysia’s new prime minister on Wednesday called early national elections that would pit his secular government against a fundamentalist Islamic opposition.

The vote will be Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s first electoral test since taking over in October, when former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad retired after 22 years in power.

They are seen as make-or-break for Abdullah, and will signal whether Islamic fundamentalism is moving into the political mainstream in a multi-ethnic but Muslim-dominated country of 25 million people.

Abdullah said in a statement that King Syed Sirajuddin Syed Putra Jamalullail had signed a decree dissolving Parliament, effective today.

No election date was immediately set.

Ethiopia

Food shortage forces thousands to relocate

Ethiopia has begun relocating hundreds of thousands of people from drought-prone areas to fertile lands to alleviate food shortages, a government spokesman said Wednesday.

But international aid groups say resettlement areas are rife with disease and lack schools and health clinics, raising concerns that officials are not fully prepared for the relocations.

Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, said 69 people at one remote relocation area died of diseases which could easily have been treated if health facilities had been nearer.

Ethiopia remains chronically short of food, and droughts over the last two years have led to an estimated 30,000 starvation deaths in the country of 70 million people.

Venezuela

Nation in turmoil seeks international aid

Venezuela’s opposition met with international observers Wednesday, pleading for help in reversing the denial of a recall referendum against President Hugo Chavez.

Rioting subsided somewhat in cities throughout this deeply divided country, which sits atop the Western Hemisphere’s largest oil reserves and is the world’s No. 5 exporter. Venezuelans are torn between those who say Chavez has become increasingly autocratic and those who say he speaks for the poor.

Venezuela’s opposition appealed to the Organization of American States, the U.S.-based Carter Center and other countries.

In Washington, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday that Venezuela was in crisis because of “Chavez’s increasingly antidemocratic actions.”

South Africa

Rape victims struggle to get HIV drugs

Despite government promises of help, victims of rape in South Africa face an uphill battle to get access to anti-retroviral drugs that could keep them from contracting AIDS, a new human-rights report charges.

South Africa, with more HIV-infected people than any other country, also has the world’s highest rate of rape, particularly gang rape and rape of children.

In 2002, under pressure from rape and AIDS activists, the government launched a program to provide free anti-retroviral drugs to South Africa’s nearly 2 million rape victims each year. The drugs, if started within three days and taken for a month, reduce the HIV transmission rate to virtually zero, studies show.

But two years later, government reluctance to endorse anti-retroviral drugs, combined with a lack of publicity and widespread misinformation about the post-rape drug program, have combined to undermine the effort, according to the Human Rights Watch report.

Gaza Strip

Israel thwarts attack by Hamas militants

An Israeli helicopter strike killed three Hamas militants riding in a car Wednesday, the second such targeted attack in five days and a possible sign that Israel is stepping up its campaign against militants ahead of a planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

Two missiles slammed into the car, triggering a fire that bystanders tried to put out with sand and their jackets. One man, using a blanket, lifted a charred body out of the car and heaved it onto a stretcher.

On its Web site, Hamas indicated that the three were about to carry out an attack. “The three martyrs were on a holy mission when the Zionist U.S.-made helicopters fired two missiles toward their vehicle,” the statement said.

Early Thursday, a militant was killed in an explosion in his house in Rafah in southern Gaza, Palestinian security officials said. They said he was apparently preparing a bomb that exploded prematurely.

Lesotho

Prince Harry helps AIDS orphans

Britain’s Prince Harry, seeking attention Wednesday for parentless children with AIDS, planted a peach tree at an orphanage in the HIV-stricken nation Lesotho.

Holding the hand of a 4-year-old orphan named Mutsu Potsane, the prince walked to a flower bed at the Mants’ase Children’s Home where he planted the fruit tree. Mutsu helped the prince fill the hole. The orphanage is 60 miles south of the capital, Maseru.

The 19-year-old prince said his trip to Africa had been “fantastic” so far, adding he hoped his presence would bring recognition to the problems of this tiny kingdom.

“Lesotho is not a country that is well-known, but it needs all the help it can get,” Harry said.

Montserrat

Volcano explodes, sends ash 20,000 feet

A major eruption at Montserrat’s volcano sent a massive cloud of ash about 20,000 feet into the sky Wednesday, but no injuries or damage were reported, officials said.

Pyroclastic flows went down the eastern flank of the Soufriere Hills volcano after the 3 p.m. explosion, said Peter Dunkley, director of the Montserrat Volcano Observatory.

A helicopter was sent around the volcano to gather information, scientists said.

The eruption came more than seven months after a major lava dome collapse July 12. No one was reported injured in the collapse, but volcanic ash settled on the ground up to 4 inches deep in places and left coatings of grit on surrounding Caribbean islands.

Geneva

Report estimates deaths from global disasters

An earthquake in the Iranian city of Bam accounted for two-thirds of the 60,000 deaths from manmade and natural disasters in 2003, a Swiss insurance company said Wednesday.

The damage caused by the catastrophes was about $70 billion, but only $18.5 billion of that was insured, Swiss Re said in its annual study of the global cost of disasters.

The 20 deadliest disasters occurred in developing countries, according to the study. The Bam earthquake, on Dec. 26, killed 41,000, while more than 2,000 people were killed in an earthquake in Algeria last May.

Nineteen of the top 20 insured losses were recorded in industrialized nations, three-quarters of those in the United States. Almost all of them were from severe storms or wildfires.