Heavy rains hit Texas

Heavy rains hit Texas
DALLAS -- More than 5 inches of rain fell Sunday in parts of North Texas, prompting high water rescues and road closures. Katie Andrews, above, was waiting for police officers after she drove into rising floodwaters on a highway near White Rock Lake.
Compromise reachedin border standoff
RAFAH, Gaza Strip -- With Palestinians facing severe shortages of bread, milk and other foods in Gaza, U.S. officials called an emergency meeting Sunday and brokered a compromise with Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in a two-month-old border standoff. Ambassador Richard Jones said cargo traffic might start flowing as soon as today at one crossing, and a Palestinian official said a second crossing would be discussed at meetings today. But Palestinian economic misery might take another hit after Hamas militants sworn to Israel's destruction presented their new Cabinet to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday. The Islamic group's failure to bring moderate forces into its government is likely to strengthen Western resolve to cut off desperately needed aid.
Belarus leader re-elected
MINSK, Belarus -- Thousands of protesters thronged the main square of the Belarusian capital Sunday in defiance of a government ban, refusing to recognize a presidential vote that gave a landslide -- and largely expected -- victory to the iron-fisted incumbent. At the opposition demonstration in the capital's main square -- the largest in years -- protesters chanted "Long Live Belarus!" and the name of the main opposition candidate. Some waved a historic flag that President Alexander Lukashenko had replaced with a Soviet-style design, while others waved European Union flags. Lukashenko won 82.6 percent of the vote compared with 6 percent for Alexander Milinkevich, the main opposition candidate, the Central Election Commission chief said early Monday, citing a nearly complete preliminary count from Sunday's balloting. Turnout was 92.6 percent, the commission said. "We demand new, honest elections," Milinkevich told the crowd Sunday evening. "This was a complete farce."
Christian conversion leadsto trial in Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan -- An Afghan man is being prosecuted in a Kabul court and could be sentenced to death on a charge of converting from Islam to Christianity, a crime under this country's Islamic laws, a judge said Sunday. The trial is believed to be the first of its kind in Afghanistan and highlights a struggle between religious conservatives and reformists over what shape Islam should take here four years after the ouster of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime. The defendant, 41-yer-old Abdul Rahman, was arrested last month after his family accused him of becoming a Christian, Judge Ansarullah Mawlavezada told The Associated Press in an interview. Rahman was charged with rejecting Islam and his trial started Thursday. During the one-day hearing, the defendant confessed that he converted from Islam to Christianity 16 years ago while working as a medical aid worker for an international Christian group helping Afghan refugees in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, Mawlavezada said. "We are not against any particular religion in the world. But in Afghanistan, this sort of thing is against the law," the judge said. "It is an attack on Islam." Mawlavezada said he would rule on the case within two months.
Human mosaic, nude style
CARACAS, Venezuela -- More than 1,500 Venezuelans shed their clothes on a main city avenue Sunday to pose for American photographer Spencer Tunick, forming a human mosaic in front of a national symbol: a statue of independence hero Simon Bolivar. As Tunick shouted commands through a megaphone, nude people of every shape, size and skin tone gathered on the avenue and stairs in front of the statue just before dawn. "There are some people over there with clothes, get them out of there!" said Tunick, an artist from Brooklyn, N.Y., who has been documenting groups of nude people in public places around the world since 1992.
Associated Press