Around the World

Milosevic attacks testimony of U.S. ambassador\nTHE HAGUE, Netherlands -- Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic challenged the testimony of an American ambassador Wednesday, reaching back to the Iran-Contra scandal of the late 1980s in an attempt to discredit the U.S. envoy. At his War Crimes Tribunal, Milosevic cross-examined William Walker, the former U.S. head of a Kosovo peacekeeping mission, about his testimony that he saw piles of bodies at Racak, a massacre that focused world attention on atrocities by Serb forces. As head of the mission for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in the late 1990s, Walker was charged with monitoring human rights abuses\nPowell considers possibilities for Palestinian state\nWASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Colin Powell said today the Bush administration is talking to other countries about setting up a provisional Palestinian state and that the proposal will be taken up at a Mideast peace conference this summer. Sharply disagreeing with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Powell said "we are not in line with his position that we should not work with Chairman (Yasser) Arafat." Other top Bush administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, have questioned whether the administration should continue dealing with Arafat as a peace partner.\nJournalist tried for breaking country's new media laws\nHARARE, Zimbabwe -- An American working for a British newspaper, the first journalist to be tried under tough new media laws some see as an attack on free speech in Zimbabwe, pleaded innocent Wednesday to charges he knowingly published false information on alleged political violence. U.S. citizen Andrew Meldrum, 50, a correspondent for the British newspaper The Guardian, faces two years in prison if found guilty by the Harare magistrate's court.\nFrench arrest five in shoe bomb investigation\nPARIS -- French anti-terrorist police rounded up five people on Wednesday who are suspected of providing assistance to alleged shoe bomber Richard C. Reid in Paris, the second such sweep in two months. The arrests came as officials in Germany said they had received intelligence of a possible al-Qaida plot to shoot down civilian airliners. Separately, Indian officials claimed they had evidence of an imminent al-Qaida attack on financial institutions in Bombay. And Britain said it was forming a 6,000-strong reaction unit in case of a Sept. 11-style attack.\nRumsfeld sees indications of al-Qaida in Kashmir\nNEW DELHI, India -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Wednesday he has seen "indications" of al-Qaida operations near the Line of Control that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan. \n"I don't have any hard evidence of how many or where," Rumsfeld told a news conference after a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee during a high-stakes mission to avert war.\n11 killed in attack on bus in Algeria\nALGIERS, Algeria -- Alleged Islamic militants opened fire on a bus in Algeria, killing 11 people, the North African nation's official news service said. Ten others were wounded. The local bus in the city of Medea, about 45 miles southeast of the capital, Algiers, had pulled up to a stop Tuesday evening when armed attackers sprayed it with gunfire, the APS news agency said.