Nation/World Roundup
Ecuadorian government extends state of emergency: Ecuador has extended until Friday the state of siege it declared during a police revolt over planned benefit cuts in which mutinous officers roughed up President Rafael Correa and five people were killed. The government also has sent soldiers to replace police who had been guarding Congress. Lawmakers say they, too, were physically attacked during Thursday's insurrection by police.
12 Arrested in counterterrorism cases: Police in southern France arrested 12 people in sweeps against suspected Islamic militant networks on Tuesday, including three men being checked for potential links to a network recruiting fighters for Afghanistan, officials said. The arrests came as France and many other European nations have stepped up terrorism alert vigilance amid what has been described as an abstract though heightened threat in recent weeks. The U.S. government warned Americans over the weekend to use caution when traveling in Europe.
Search in Italy for missing US balloonists ends: The Italian coast guard said Monday that it had called off the search for a pair of American balloonists who disappeared last week in the Adriatic Sea. The search was called off at 3:30 p.m. (13:30 GMT) after a final attempt to locate Richard Abruzzo, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Carol Rymer Davis, of Denver, had failed, said Coast Guard spokesman Lt. Massimo Maccheroni. Maccheroni said that a robotic vehicle scanned the seabed of the Adriatic for any remains. "We found nothing that could be traced to the balloonists," he said.
Italian PM under fire again for Holocaust remark: The head of Rome's Jewish community joined the Vatican newspaper and others Tuesday in sharply rebuking Premier Silvio Berlusconi for a joke about Jews, money and the Holocaust which was caught on videotape. The joke was one of several controversial comments Berlusconi made while chatting with fans outside his residence on his 74th birthday last week. His comments were captured on video and broadcast this weekend on the website of the left-leaning La Republica newspaper. On Saturday, the newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference slammed the gaffe-prone premier and a day later the Vatican newspaper said his comments were "deplorable."
US apologizes for attack on Pakistani soldiers: The U.S. ambassador to Pakistan has apologized for a recent helicopter attack that killed Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border. Anne Patterson said in a statement Wednesday that a joint investigation has established that U.S. helicopters mistook the soldiers for insurgents they had been pursuing. Pakistan has said the attack on Sept. 30 killed three members of Pakistan's Frontier Corps and wounded three others.
Dozens of Europeans in terror training: Dozens of Muslim militants with European citizenship are believed to be hiding out in the lawless tribal area of northwestern Pakistan, Pakistani and Western intelligence officials say, training for missions that could include terror attacks in European capitals.