WORLD IN BRIEF

Burma Petitioners Want Political Prisoners Freed

RANGOON, Burma -- Activists staging a rare protest against Burma's ruling military junta have collected more than a half-million signatures on a petition demanding the release of all political prisoners, an organizer said Tuesday.

The campaign ended Tuesday, three weeks after its launch by the "88 Generation Students Group," whose members took part in a 1988 pro-democracy uprising that was brutally crushed by the military.

"The campaign was a success because we managed to collect 535,580 signatures from across the country despite unfavorable conditions and under extreme difficulty," said one organizer, Jimmy, who asked that only his first name be used because he feared reprisal from authorities. "If the people were given just one day of complete freedom, I could garner millions of signatures."

Officials in the tightly controlled Southeast Asian country did not try to stop the petitioning.

But on Oct. 6, they arrested a member of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition party, who had joined the campaign and had 400 signatures in his possession.

The campaign began a week after authorities detained five prominent student leaders. Two of the activists had sent a letter to the junta chairman inquiring about the status of three other activists detained earlier. It was unclear why those three were detained.

* * *

AFRICA

· N'DJAMENA, Chad -- Chad's army put tanks on the streets and bolstered security in the capital, N'Djamena, as rebels appeared to be advancing toward the city after attacking two towns in the remote southeast's Sudanese border.

A leader of the rebel coalition, the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development, said its fighters would not advance immediately.

· KIGALI, Rwanda -- A Rwandan government-appointed commission launched a probe into allegations that French troops trained and armed the Hutu militias that were the main force behind a 100-day slaughter in 1994 in which 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed. France, which sent in soldiers under a U.N.-authorized operation, has denied any involvement in the killings.

· KINSHASA, Congo -- A group of 11 prisoners convicted for their involvement in the 2001 assassination of Congo President Laurent Kabila escaped from jail in the capital, prison officials said.

ASIA

· SHANGHAI -- Two senior officials in charge of managing Shanghai's government-owned assets are under investigation in a corruption scandal that brought down the city's top leader and appears to be spreading, the government said.

· SEOUL -- South Korea's unification minister, in charge of relations with North Korea, offered to resign to take responsibility for the North's nuclear test, the presidential office said Wednesday. He is the second minister to resign this week.

THE MIDDLE EAST

· GAZA CITY -- An Associated Press photographer was freed unharmed Tuesday after a harrowing day in the hands of Palestinians who abducted him at gunpoint and dressed him in women's clothes to spirit him from one secret location to another.

Emilio Morenatti was brought before midnight to the office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas by Fatah officials. It was not clear who kidnapped him.

THE AMERICAS

· TORONTO -- A judge struck down a portion of Canada's anti-terrorism law, ruling that the clause dealing with the definition of terrorism violates the country's bill of rights. The ruling hands at least a partial victory to Mohammed Momin Khawaja, the first person charged under Canada's Anti-Terrorism Act. The law was passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

EUROPE

· LONDON -- Britain and Ireland will not give Romanians and Bulgarians the free access to work that other East Europeans received when their countries joined the European Union in 2004, officials said.

-- From News Services