Around the World

Children will be exempt from new rules that will require travelers to show passports when entering the U.S. at land or sea borders, the Bush administration announced on Thursday. The new passport requirements will take effect as soon as January 2008.\nU.S. troops raided a car bomb factory west of Baghdad with five buildings full of propane tanks and ordinary chemicals the military believes were to be used in bombs, a spokesman said Thursday, a day after insurgents blew up a truck carrying chlorine gas canisters.\nThe number of laid-off workers filing for unemployment benefits dropped sharply last week after having been driven higher the previous week by storm-related layoffs. The Labor Department reported that applications for jobless benefits totaled 332,000 last week, down by 27,000 from the previous week.\nThe governor of Minnesota signed a law requiring utilities to generate a quarter of their power from renewable sources such as wind, water and the sun by 2025. Now, about half of the power produced in the state is from coal, and only 5 percent from renewable sources.