The government had been hoping to tack the adultery ban onto the draft penal code, apparently to appease Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's conservative and devoutly Islamic base.
Asia
• SEOUL -- Torrential rain has devastated huge swaths of North Korea, destroying homes and farmland ahead of the autumn harvest, the official KCNA news agency said in a rare report on a natural disaster.
A tropical depression brought extremely heavy downpours to the entire country from Saturday to Monday, with rainfall in some areas exceeding eight inches over 48 hours, the agency said. KCNA mentioned no casualties or deaths.
EUROPE
• LONDON -- Prime Minister Tony Blair warned of the threat posed by climate change and urged support for the principles of the Kyoto accord on global warming, a treaty rejected by President Bush as unfair toward U.S. industry.
Blair promised to make global warming a focal point of Britain's presidency of the Group of Eight summit next year and said he would push for greater international commitment to cut greenhouse gases.
• BELFAST -- Sinn Fein leaders accused British spies of hiding an electronic listening device inside the Belfast headquarters of the Irish Republican Army-linked party.
Sinn Fein's leader, Gerry Adams, displayed the 5-foot-3-inch-long device, which apparently included a string of long-life battery packs and a microphone. He said it was hidden in the floor of Connolly House, the heavily guarded Sinn Fein base in Catholic west Belfast.
Adams, who did not say when Sinn Fein made the discovery, publicized the find on the eve of Sinn Fein's departure for high-stakes negotiations in England.
-- From News Services
