WORLD IN BRIEF

Millions Facing Hunger In Zimbabwe, U.N. Says

HARARE, Zimbabwe -- More than a third of Zimbabweans will need food aid by early 2008 after a poor harvest this year, leading international aid organizations said Tuesday.

A report by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Program said crop failures in southern provinces and rising poverty would cause about 2.1 million people to face serious food shortages by the third quarter of this year.

The number is expected to grow to 4.1 million by the end of March, which would be a third of Zimbabwe's estimated 12 million people.

The grim outlook comes as President Robert Mugabe struggles to tame the world's highest inflation rate and ease political tensions in the southern African country once seen as the region's breadbasket.

Zimbabwe has suffered food shortages since 2001. Critics blame Mugabe's seizure of white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks.

Zimbabwean agriculture officials were not immediately available for comment on the report.

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the americas

· PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad -- A Guyanese suspect in an alleged plot to bomb a fuel pipeline feeding New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport surrendered to police in Trinidad, a police official said.

Abdel Nur turned himself in at a police station outside the Trinidadian capital of Port-of-Spain, police spokeswoman Wendy Campbell said. He is the fourth man arrested in the alleged plot, including a former opposition member of Guyana's parliament and a former airport air cargo employee who was arrested in New York.

· OTTAWA -- Canada has denied a visa to South African anti-apartheid leader Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the ex-wife of former South African president Nelson Mandela, because of her criminal record. She was to be the keynote speaker at a fundraising gala in Toronto.

the middle east

· RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Palestinians marked 40 years of Israeli military occupation with rare calls for soul-searching and a warning from leader Mahmoud Abbas that months of bloody internal fighting have pushed them to the brink of civil war.