World in brief: Israeli missile kills top militant
Israel killed a top Gaza militant with a missile strike on his car Tuesday, prompting threats of more rocket attacks from Gaza on Israeli border towns.
Mubarak al-Hassanat, 37, was driving in a black jeep on Gaza’s coastal road when the vehicle was struck by missiles. The jeep veered off the road onto the beach, with its roof sheared off and the front twisted.
Al-Hassanat was the most prominent militant to be killed in an airstrike in more than a year. He was a senior official in the Hamas-run Interior Ministry in Gaza, which oversees the security forces.
Paris
Lawmakers adopt immigrant exams
French lawmakers adopted a hotly contested bill on Tuesday that would institute language exams and potential DNA testing for prospective immigrants, making it more difficult for families to join loved ones in France.
The DNA amendment, the most controversial aspect of the legislation, is meant to ensure that claims of family ties are true. It was added as a way to ensure that visa-seekers were not using fraudulent papers, common in some African countries.
While the expensive test is optional, critics fear it would be viewed as mandatory by those hoping to join family members in France.
The opposition Socialist Party has said it would take the issue before the Constitutional Council, which ensures that all laws conform with the constitution, in the hopes of getting the DNA amendment dumped. The move delays the bill’s formal passage into law.
Miami
Cancer sending church leader home
The leader of Greece’s Orthodox Church will return home for chemotherapy to treat a cancer that spread from his liver to his abdominal cavity, his doctor said Tuesday.
Archbishop Christodoulos, 68, had come to Miami to seek a liver transplant, but doctors abandoned the procedure after they discovered that the cancer had spread.
The doctors could not go ahead with the transplant because anti-organ-rejection drugs that the archbishop would have had to take would fuel the tumor’s growth.
The archbishop will probably go home this week, said transplant specialist Andreas Tzakis, director of the University of Miami’s organ transplant institute.
Cairo, Egypt
Bin Laden pushes Darfur holy war
Osama bin Laden renewed his call for a holy war against a proposed peacekeeping force in Sudan’s wartorn region of Darfur in a message that appeared on Web sites Tuesday.
The audio recording was accompanied by a still picture of the al-Qaida leader, and excerpts were aired Monday by Al-Jazeera television.
Bin Laden called for foreign forces to be driven from Darfur.
“It is the duty of the people of Islam in the Sudan and its environs, especially the Arabian Peninsula, to perform jihad against the Crusader invaders and wage armed rebellion to remove those who let them in,” he said, according to a transcript provided by IntelCenter, which monitors extremist Web sites.