World Briefs

LONDON - All Gurkha veterans who retired before 1997 with at least four years' service will be allowed to settle in the UK, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has said.

Ms Smith told MPs she was "proud to offer this country's welcome to all who have served in the brigade of Gurkhas".

It comes after a high-profile campaign by Joanna Lumley and other supporters of Gurkha rights - and an embarrassing Commons defeat for the government.

Some 36,000 Gurkhas who left before 1997 had been denied UK residency. Gurkhas, who are recruited from Nepal, have been part of the British Army for almost 200 years.

BAGHDAD – Three American soldiers were killed and nine others wounded Thursday in a bombing attack in Baghdad, the US military said, in a burst of violence only weeks before American combat troops are due to leave Iraqi cities.

The attack was one of a series of bombings to hit Baghdad and the northern city of Kirkuk, killing at least 66 people and wounding dozens more in two days.

The deadliest blast Thursday occurred in Baghdad's southern Dora district, where a roadside bomb exploded near an American foot patrol, US and Iraqi officials said.

MEXICO CITY – No one has identified ground zero in the swine flu epidemic. Just where or when the new strain of influenza first jumped from a pig and began infecting people is a scientific mystery — one that a group of flu detectives is determined to solve. Scientists are returning to La Gloria, a pig-farming village in the Veracruz mountains where Mexico's earliest confirmed case of swine flu was identified.

CAIRO – A real estate mogul with ties to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's son was sentenced to death Thursday for ordering the killing of a Lebanese pop star who had been his lover.

Hisham Talaat Moustafa, a member of the ruling National Democratic Party, was accused of paying a former Egyptian State Security officer $2 million to kill Suzanne Tamim in Dubai.

BELGRADE, Serbia – Serbian police disarmed a man inside the president's headquarters, where for about five hours Thursday he threatened to blow himself up unless his court case was settled.

President Boris Tadic's office announced the resolution of the standoff, but details were not available. His office said he had entered the building after the incident began, but it did not give his reason for going in while SWAT teams dealt with the situation. A black police van was later seen driving away from the presidency.

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