U-S Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is in Baghdad on a surprise visit to discuss the issue of prisoner abuse with U-S military officials.
The government of Laos has announced plans to eradicate opium poppy cultivation on 45-hundred hectares nationwide this year. The official Lao news agency, K-P-L, says this is the fourth year of a government strategy to wipe out opium cultivation by 2005. Most of the operation is being conducted in the northern provinces of Laos. Earlier this year, the United Nations agency for drug control said Burma and Laos still rank second and third behind Afghanistan as the world's leading producers of opium.
Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee is expected to resign today as his governing party faces defeat in parliamentary elections.
New fighting erupst between U-S troops and Shi'ite militiamen in Najaf and Karbala, where witnesses say gunfire echoed from the Imam Hussein mosque, one of Shi'ite Islam's most revered shrines.
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