WORLD IN BRIEF

· ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- A military court sentenced five men to death for their roles in a 2003 plot to kill the president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, an army spokesman said.

The men, one of whom was a soldier, were arrested after suicide bombers tried to ram two explosives-laden vehicles into Musharraf's motorcade on a road in Rawalpindi, near the capital, Islamabad, on Dec. 25, 2003, said Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan. Sixteen people, most of them presidential guards, were killed.

THE AMERICAS

· CARACAS, Venezuela -- The government has temporarily suspended permits for foreign missionaries after an American evangelist advocated assassinating President Hugo Chavez.

The announcement came four days after the evangelist, Pat Robertson, called on his television show for the assassination of Chavez, a former soldier who has often accused the United States of plotting to kill him.

AFRICA

· BUJUMBURA, Burundi -- Former Hutu rebel leader Pierre Nkurunziza became president and pledged to make his nation an African example by building on its success in ending a 12-year civil war that killed 300,000.

The inauguration of Nkurunziza, although opposed by many of the country's ethnic Tutsi minority, was seen as an important step forward for the small, central African nation of 7 million, battered by war, ethnic division and poverty.

the middle east

· JERUSALEM -- A Jewish settler who set herself on fire to protest the Gaza withdrawal died of her injuries, hospital officials said. She is the sole Israeli fatality linked to a plan that had polarized public opinion.

The woman, identified by police as a West Bank settler in her sixties, was stopped at a roadblock outside the occupied coastal strip on Aug. 17. Prevented from reaching Gaza settlements ahead of their evacuation, she doused herself with fuel and set fire to herself.

--From News Services