Poland

Prime minister announces resignation

Prime Minister Leszek Miller announced Friday he would step down the day after Poland joins the European Union on May 1, taking the blame for his government’s collapse in popularity and raising the prospect of early elections.

President Aleksander Kwasniewski, who accepted the decision, expressed confidence it would ultimately help political stability in Poland — a key U.S. ally in Iraq — after months of weakness under Miller.

But the news left other European countries facing political uncertainty in Warsaw in the weeks up to and including Poland’s entry into the EU.

Miller, a communist party official before Poland’s 1989 turn to democracy, has been in power since leading the Democratic Left Alliance in September 2001 elections.

Ivory Coast

Patrols heightened after deadly clashes

Security forces cracked down Friday on opposition strongholds in Ivory Coast’s largest city, rounding up opponents as pro-government mobs with sticks and iron bars roamed mostly empty streets a day after bloody protests.

Amid sporadic and occasionally heavy volleys of gunfire, opposition leaders accused security forces of carrying out summary executions in the city. Police denied the charge.

In the rebel-controlled north, commander Sherif Ousmane said: “We will make every effort to liberate Ivory Coast of (President) Laurent Gbagbo.” He did not elaborate.

Human Rights Watch said 25 people were killed and 40 were wounded in Thursday’s anti-government demonstrations.

London

Study: Circumcision protects against AIDS

A new study found that uncircumcised men were nearly seven times more likely to get the AIDS virus.

The study by Robert C. Bollinger and colleagues from Johns Hopkins University Medical School and the National AIDS Research Institute in Pune, India, was published Friday as a “research letter” in The Lancet medical journal.

The authors of the Lancet study think cells in the foreskin may be particularly susceptible to infection.

The research published in The Lancet tracked 2,298 men who were being treated at three clinics in Pune, and who were confirmed to be HIV-negative at the start of the study.

Paris

Three suspects detained in bomb threats

Anti-terrorist police detained three suspects in connection with an investigation into a mysterious group’s threats to bomb French railways, police said Friday.

The suspects, two men and a woman, were taken into custody Thursday in Paris and the suburban Val-de-Marne region, police officials said. They were being held for questioning at the headquarters of French anti-terrorist police.

An obscure group that calls itself AZF has threatened to blow up bombs at French railway targets unless it is paid millions of dollars.

On Thursday, the group issued a cryptic letter suggesting it could carry out an attack to surpass the terror bombings that killed 190 people in Madrid, Spain.

Police said the three suspects’ movements corresponded in a “troubling” manner with certain elements of the AZF inquiry, police said.

Tunisia

Syria to target Israel at Arab summit

Despite the threat of U.S. sanctions, hard-line Syria led calls Friday for next week’s annual Arab summit to take a tough stand against Israel in the wake of the killing of Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin.

Damascus’ insistence that Israel be punished for assassinating the Palestinian leader in a rocket attack March 22 in Gaza could become the focus of the two-day summit that starts here Monday, instead of an American-backed blueprint for Middle East political reform and attempts to revive a stalled Arab peace plan.

The talks had been expected to breathe life into the Saudi plan for regional peace that was unveiled at the 2002 Arab summit in Lebanon.