Army negotiates for suspected al-Qaida men

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Hundreds of Pakistani soldiers were sent to a remote region of northwest Pakistan on Monday after tribesmen offered refuge to six suspected al-Qaida men, authorities said.

The government was negotiating with the tribesmen to hand over the men.

The nationalities of the six men were not released, but they were believed to be from a Middle Eastern country. They were stopped before Monday near a paramilitary checkpoint, about 100 miles southwest of Peshawar.

Pakistan's deeply conservative tribal area is believed to harbor most remaining remnants of al-Qaida who have fled the U.S.-led coalition's offensives in Afghanistan.

New pump reverses heart failure in patients

BERLIN -- Ten patients with end-stage heart failure were successfully treated with mechanical pump implants to rest their enlarged hearts while drugs helped repair the damaged organs, a renowned heart surgeon said Monday.

It took an average of six months on the pump for the hearts to recover, and the patients -- once near death -- since have returned to work.

Their hearts have been functioning normally for an average of a year, with one patient reaching four years, Sir Magdi Yacoub said at the annual meeting of the European Society of Cardiology.

Colleagues, while impressed, said it was too early to tell whether the patients have been cured.

The pump, called the HeartMate, takes over the heart's job of pumping blood around the body, giving the heart a chance to shrink back to its proper size and repair itself. The heart continues beating, it just stops pumping blood.

Council accepts plan to end church tensions

GENEVA -- The World Council of Churches accepted a plan to ease differences over forms of worship and inclusion of women that had threatened to split Western Protestant and Eastern Orthodox Christians.

The plan grew out of a three-year study by a special commission. It forms the basis for "common prayer" and decisions by consensus with the aim of giving greater recognition to Orthodox concerns in the 342-church organization dominated by Protestants.

The Roman Catholic Church doesn't belong to the council, but works cooperatively with it.

Mandela rebukes U.S. for threats to attack Iraq

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Nelson Mandela said Monday that he is "appalled" by U.S. threats to attack Iraq and warned that Washington is "introducing chaos in international affairs."

As several world leaders at a summit here urged restraint by the United States, South Africa's revered former president issued a stinging rebuke to the Bush administration.

"We are really appalled by any country, whether a superpower or a small country, that goes outside the U.N. and attacks independent countries," Mandela said. "No country should be allowed to take the law into their own hands."

The United States has made toppling Saddam Hussein a priority, and Vice President Cheney has argued in favor of pre-emptive military action to remove Saddam from power.

Civilian deaths spark debate on use of force

JERUSALEM -- The killings of a dozen Palestinians, most of them civilians, in less than a week have plunged Israel into a debate over how much force is permissible in its war on terrorism.

At the center of the storm is Israel's new army chief, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, who laid out his doctrine in recent days -- that Israel is fighting a war of survival against Palestinian militants who must be crushed at all costs.

Critics say Yaalon, on the job for just two months, is encouraging excesses that could erode Israel's moral high ground against the Palestinian suicide bombers who have killed hundreds of Israeli civilians and have badly disrupted normal life in the Jewish state.

Yaalon's defenders say Palestinian militants must be hunted to protect Israeli civilians, and that while Palestinian civilian casualties are regrettable, they are also inevitable.

-- From wire reports