Portugal

Officials try to stop spread of Marburg virus

The Angolan health ministry may shut down the isolation ward of an Angolan hospital treating victims of the Ebola-like Marburg virus to stem the spread of the disease, an Angolan health official said Monday.

A team of World Health Organization experts was visiting the ward in Angola’s Uige province to evaluate the situation and a decision could be reached in 48 to 72 hours, health official Filomena Wilson said.

Wilson said the decision would take into account the needs of patients who go to the hospital for other illnesses.

The medical charity Doctors Without Borders and the WHO have advised that the hospital be shut down temporarily until the outbreak is contained.

The rare Marburg virus has already killed 193 people out of a total 218 people infected, the Angolan Health ministry said Monday.

Alabama

Serial bomber may have stashed TNT near armory

Eric Rudolph stashed dynamite near a building that government agents used as a headquarters during the huge manhunt for the serial bomber, federal sources close to the case told The Associated Press on Monday.

Agents believe that while he was a fugitive, Rudolph left a large stash of dynamite near a National Guard armory that served as a temporary base for agents during the search for Rudolph near Murphy, N.C., a federal official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The exact proximity of the explosives to the armory is not known, but the official said the cache was close enough to the building to have caused damage had it exploded.

Another federal source said bomb components were found buried near the armory — located near woods about two miles outside of Murphy — but officials weren’t sure how long they had been in the ground. The device “wasn’t operational,” but contained all the pieces of a bomb, the source said, also speaking on condition of anonymity.

New Jersey

Alleged abductor ends standoff peacefully

A man abducted his 4-month-old daughter and her mother at gunpoint Monday, then held them in a car surrounded by police for more than three hours before releasing them unharmed, authorities said. He later surrendered peacefully.

The standoff began just outside Newark in Irvington, when Almutah Saunders shot and wounded the baby’s grandfather in the leg, then seized the child and her mother, Erika Turner, and led police on a chase across the state, authorities said.

An Amber Alert for the child was issued.

Irvington Mayor Wayne Smith said Saunders was wanted on charges of previously abducting Turner.

BAGHDAD

Rumsfeld to meet with Iraqi leaders

The leaders of Iraq’s emerging new government must not allow “turbulence or incompetence or corruption” to slow or foil progress toward building democracy and defeating the insurgency, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld arrived at the Iraqi capital before sunrise today aboard an Air Force C-17 cargo plane for his second visit in three months. The visit reflecting a desire to push the political and military momentum that he believes has been growing since the Jan. 30 elections for a national assembly.

Rumsfeld was meeting later today with Interim President Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish former rebel leader, and Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Shiite Muslim who was designated interim prime minister last week.