Ecuador
Rumsfeld urges aid against drug trafficking
Latin American countries must work together to defeat drug trafficking and international terrorism as they have done in working to keep the peace in Haiti, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday.
Rumsfeld, in South America for a conference of Western Hemisphere defense ministers, told reporters he hoped to strengthen regional security agreements aimed at stopping narcotics and terror organizations.
He and other U.S. officials held up the peacekeeping force in Haiti, which draws heavily from Latin countries, as an example of such cooperation.
Despite Rumsfeld's calls for cooperation across Latin America, significant gaps between the policies of the United States and many of the largest countries in Latin America remain.
Niger
Nomads receive ballots in coup-prone nation
Niger's first elected leader to see his term through without assassination or overthrow faced five challengers Tuesday in an election that aims to consolidate democracy in the coup-prone nation.
Helicopters shuttled ballots to remote nomads on the Sahara's edge. President Mamadou Tandja voted early at the capital, Niamey, urging his 5.3 million fellow voters to "go vote in calm and in serenity."
Tandja first won elections overseen by a transition government in 1999, after presidential guards armed with an anti-aircraft gun assassinated his military predecessor on the tarmac at an airport ceremony.
Tandja, 66, won 60 percent of the vote five years ago in the uranium-rich, cash-poor nation. He was expected to prevail in the new elections, which will go to a second round if no candidate wins an outright majority.
London
Smoking ban announced
Four hundred years after King James I denounced tobacco as "loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs," the British government is taking heed. It announced plans Tuesday to ban smoking in most public places, including restaurants and any pub that serves food.
Anti-smoking activists welcomed the proposal, which would only apply to England, but criticized Health Secretary John Reid for letting smokers continue lighting up in some pubs and bars.
Beijing
China expresses regret for submarine incident
China expressed regret through diplomatic channels Tuesday that one of its nuclear-powered submarines intruded into Japanese territorial waters last week for "technical reasons," Japanese officials said.
The apparent Chinese admission followed growing pressure from Tokyo to own up to the incident, which is expected to worsen already tense Sino-Japanese relations. Japanese officials had hinted that they might impose trade sanctions and rule out a possible summit between their leaders if China didn't apologize.
"China got its fingers burned," said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a China expert at the French National Center for Scientific Research in Paris. "It had no choice but to send a rather mild form of apology."
Beijing remained publicly low-key Tuesday about the incident. A spokeswoman refused to confirm that China had apologized.
No comments
Commenting is turned off for this story.