PETR DAVID JOSEK / Associated Press
Holiday view: Observers look at the Christmas market set up in the Old Town Squareof Prague, Czech Republic.
In the World
France, Rwanda restore their ties
PARIS - France and Rwanda have restored diplomatic ties, officials in both countries said yesterday, three years after relations were severed when a Paris judge accused Rwandan President Paul Kagame of ordering his predecessor's assassination.President Nicolas Sarkozy's chief of staff, Claude Gueant, had discussions with Kagame yesterday in Rwanda's capital. Afterward, Sarkozy and Kagame "decided to reestablish diplomatic relations," a statement from Sarkozy's office said. Rwanda's foreign minister confirmed the move.
France and Rwanda have frequently sparred over the 1994 genocide in the African country. But tensions peaked in 2006, when Rwanda cut off diplomatic relations, furious about a French probe into former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana's mysterious assassination - a probe that led to French efforts to arrest officials close to Kagame. The sensitive case is still unresolved. - AP
5 die of swine flu during the hajj
MINA, Saudi Arabia - Five people died from swine flu during the hajj, Saudi Arabia said yesterday, a relatively small number considering the event is the largest annual gathering in the world and is seen as an ideal incubator for the virus.But some experts warned that the true extent of the virus would not be known until pilgrims returned to their home countries around the world.
Speaking on the final day of the Islamic pilgrimage, Abdullah al-Rabeeah said authorities had recorded 73 cases - including the five deaths - of H1N1, commonly known as swine flu. He said only 10 percent of the 2.5 million pilgrims were vaccinated against the virus. - AP
Chef goes missing from cruise ship
ROME - Colombian maritime authorities searched yesterday for an Italian chef believed to have gone overboard last week from a U.S. cruise ship off Colombia's Caribbean coast, officials and the man's family said.Accounts differed as to when and where Angelo Faliva, 31, was last seen as the Princess Cruises' Coral Princess sailed from Aruba to Cartagena, Colombia.
Princess Cruises spokeswoman Julie Benson said Faliva was last seen on a deck about 8:30 a.m. Thursday, when he spoke with another crew member. But his family said it was told he had unexpectedly walked out of the ship's galley about 8:15 p.m. Wednesday and hadn't been seen since.
Benson said that Faliva's cabin had been sealed and the ship searched, and that no cameras captured video of a crew member going overboard. - AP
Elsewhere:
The U.S. military said that a U.S. soldier in Iraq died yesterday of injuries unrelated to combat and that an investigation was under way. The death raised to at least 4,366 the number of U.S. military personnel who have died in Iraq since the war began in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Pirates attacked a Spanish fishing vessel yesterday in the Indian Ocean with small arms and a rocket-propelled grenade, but private security guards aboard the ship, the Ortube Berria, drove them off with gunfire, officials said.
