World briefs

MADRID - Two Turkish immigrants who were reduced to begging on the streets after being released from prison are pleading with authorities to send them back to jail, judicial sources said Wednesday.

Sahin Eren and Erden Vardar were arrested in July, 2006 in southern Spain in possession of 11 kilogrammes (24 pounds) of heroin.

But confusion over their date of arrest forced a judge to release them in July as the two-year legal period of preventive detention had passed.

Since then, the two men have begged on the streets of Madrid, where they sleep in a Red Cross hostel.

They have pleaded with the judge to send them back to prison rather than face the streets again, a request he denied as they have not been convicted and sentenced.

NEW YORK - A REVISED $700 BILLION U. S. financial bailout plan is significantly more likely to pass Congress, the House said Wednesday, as European leaders scrambled to agree on their own bank rescue package.

The Senate geared up to vote on the bill after 7:30 p.m. The House, which rejected the original plan on Monday, was likely to vote on Friday, a senior aide said.

House spokesman Tony Fratto said the new bill was significantly more likely to pass after revisions, including one that would raise the cap on individual bank deposits guaranteed by the government to $250,000 from $100,000.

A source at a European government, speaking anonymously, said France plans to propose a $300 billion plan to bail out European banks on Saturday. French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde denied the report.

JODHPUR, India - The death toll from a deadly stampede at a Hindu temple in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan has risen to 224, police said late Wednesday.

The toll was higher than an estimate given earlier in the day, and Inspector-General Rajiv Dasot said police had received more reports from bereaved families.

"People and relatives are now reporting back with the deaths of relatives and we now know 224 is the number of those killed," Dasot said in Jodhpur, where the stampede took place early Tuesday.

The disaster occurred when more than 25,000 worshippers rushed to reach the hill-top shrine to Hindu warrior goddess Chamunda in Jodhpur's 15th-century Chamunda Devi temple.

At least 35 more people were hospitalised after the disaster, which came at the start of Navaratri, a nine-day Hindu festival which is one of the most important in the Hindu calendar and when crowds are particularly large. The temple reopened on Wednesday.