MATT DUNHAM / Associated Press
Royal Mail workers join in a strike outside a sorting office in London. They are seeking better pay and job protection.
In the World
Postal workers on strike in Britain
LONDON - Britain's mail service ground to a halt yesterday after tens of thousands of postal workers walked off the job in a 48-hour national strike.Rolling walkouts that began over the summer have contributed to a backlog of five million packages and letters, according to Royal Mail spokesman David Simpson.
Workers began the strikes over better pay and job protection against a plan to modernize equipment that they say will result in job losses.
About 42,000 postal staff and drivers began a 24-hour strike yesterday morning. About 78,000 delivery and collection workers plan a one-day strike today, and more strikes are planned starting next Thursday, according to the Communications Workers Union.
- AP
Iraqis arrest 14 terror suspects
BAGHDAD - Iraqi security forces arrested 14 suspected al-Qaeda members in western and northern Iraq, including three who were formerly detained by U.S. troops in the country, local police officials said yesterday.Six men arrested in Fallujah were accused of planning attacks in and around the city, which is 40 miles west of Baghdad, said the city's police chief, Col. Mahmoud al-Isawi. Two of the men in Fallujah were suspected by the United States of having links with insurgents but were released in July for lack of evidence, Isawi said.
Police detained the eight other suspects, one of whom was a woman, during a raid Tuesday on a suspected militant hideout in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, according to the police chief in the city, Jamal Taher. Police confiscated roadside bombs and car bombs during the raid, he said.
- AP
Tamils released from detention
KATHANKULAM, Sri Lanka - More than 4,000 ethnic Tamils displaced by civil war left government-run camps yesterday, the latest to be released amid international criticism that Sri Lanka is moving too slowly in letting thousands of others go.Hundreds of thousands of minority Tamil civilians were forced into the camps after fleeing the final months of the government's decades-long war with the Tamil Tiger rebels, which ended in May. Sri Lanka has said that it cannot release the Tamils until they are screened for rebel ties.
Rights groups have condemned the detention as an illegal form of collective punishment for the ethnic group. Aid groups say the camps are overcrowded and prone to disease, and fear that imminent monsoons will create a health crisis.
- AP
Elsewhere:
A strong earthquake centered in the towering Hindu Kush Mountains shook a wide area of eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan early today, swaying buildings in the Afghan and Pakistani capitals. There were no initial reports of damage or casualties, but the temblor - with a preliminary magnitude of 6.2 - was centered in a remote area where communications are poor.
