Unrest

JERUSALEM - Palestinian leaders struggled yesterday to resolve the political confusion triggered by the prime minister's attempt to resign, as fresh unrest erupted in the Gaza Strip over Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's decision to grant a cousin expanded powers over security forces. In the West Bank city of Ramallah, Arafat met with disgruntled Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia and again rejected his resignation submitted the day before, according to Saeb Erekat, a Cabinet member. Earlier yesterday, Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip burned down a building belonging to a Palestinian Authority military intelligence service amid anger over Moussa Arafat being granted broad authority over security services as part of a sudden shake-up.

POOLESVILLE - Nam Gyal has work to do under the gaze of more than 1,000 Buddhas. The tall man in maroon robes takes his time in the still of night emptying 204 identical brass water bowls, one by one, into a plastic bucket - all the while praying, praying, praying. It is nearing 2 a.m., the beginning of a new day in an unbroken string of days: more than 19 years of nonstop prayer, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, conducted by members of Kunzang Palyul Choling, a Tibetan Buddhist temple in western Montgomery County.

UNITED NATIONS - Secretary General Kofi Annan said yesterday that increased unrest in Iraq was complicating the work of his special envoy there and throwing into question the dates for the transfer of power to Iraqis, the scheduling of elections and a full-scale United Nations return to Baghdad. With the growing opposition to the American-led coalition, many political figures in the United States and Europe have called for greater U.N. responsibility and presence in Iraq, but Annan cautioned against that possibility "for the foreseeable future."

WASHINGTON -- Nearly a year after President Bush landed on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, triumphantly declaring an end to major combat operations in Iraq before a banner reading "Mission Accomplished," the president faces an unexpected reality: The war is becoming a political liability for him. Searing images of violence and death in Iraq, including photos of charred bodies of American contractors hanging from a bridge in the city of Fallujah, have...

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan - The Uzbek government yesterday blamed four recent days of deadly attacks and suicide bombings on a banned Islamic group whose members allegedly got their training from the instructors of al-Qaida fighters. But a member of the outlawed organization said in an interview that her group had played no part in the unrest. "We only use two tools to fight the regime: our religious ideas and peaceful political means," said the 31-year-old woman, who spent five years in Uzbek prisons for her membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir, the banned Party of Liberation.

KABUL, Afghanistan - It was troubling news from a place with an unfamiliar name. Troops loyal to one of Afghanistan's most powerful and notorious warlords swept into the northern provincial capital of Maymana yesterday, brushing aside security forces of the U.S.-backed central government and forcing the governor to flee. Uzbek leader Abdul Rashid Dostum seized control of the city near the Turkmenistan border as more than 600 of his fighters advanced from three directions, said Afghan Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali.

WASHINGTON - If it weren't for Iraq, official attention in Washington would probably be fixed on the Caribbean nation of Haiti, where a spreading insurrection against the government and persistent poverty threaten to cause a new exodus of "boat people" bound for Florida on leaky vessels. Nine years after the United States disbanded a military junta and led an international force to restore democracy in Haiti, the hemisphere's second-oldest republic is in the grip of an armed uprising that has seized as many as 11 cities and left dozens of people dead.

Before Martha Stewart told the world she'd just like to focus on her salad, before most of us had even heard of ImClone, some of the nation's florists had made up their minds. Martha Stewart -- good for flowers, bad for florists. The do-it-yourself domestic diva encouraged millions of fans to buy their gardenias wholesale -- or, conveniently, from her Web site -- and then arrange the bouquets themselves. So when the Baltimore-based American Institute of Floral Designers honored Stewart with its Non-Industry Award of Merit in 2002, a handful of florists complained.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two U.S. Army helicopters circled helplessly yesterday morning above the confused scene on An Nidal street, contributing little but noise. Below lay the scattered shards of a late-model Iraqi ambulance outside the headquarters of the Red Cross, a dozen extinguished lives and another tear in the U.S. plan to rebuild Iraq. Amid the carnage of the suicide car bombings that rocked the Iraqi capital early yesterday, the helicopters made one point painfully clear: The Pentagon's precision weapons and advanced machinery can do little to stop a fleet of explosives-laden vehicles from maneuvering through crowded city streets.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - On the street corner 50 yards from a group of U.S. soldiers, a giggling 10-year-old boy clutched an AK-47 assault rifle, which was fully loaded and ready to fire. The rifle, once the property of the U.S. military, would not be fired in the direction of the soldiers on this night, but soon would be. Muhammad al-Jurany got the weapon from a member of the new Iraqi security apparatus, the Facilities Protection Service, a force of 14,500 armed guards who are to protect hotels, government buildings and oil pipelines, among other fixtures.