France strike

PARIS – France was plunged into travel chaos yesterday for the second time in a month as striking transport workers halted trains and buses in their face-off with President Nicolas Sarkozy over pension reforms.

Genocide-tribunal * PHNOM PENH – Ailing Khmer Rouge leader Khieu Samphan, whose imminent arrest by Cambodia’s UN-backed genocide court is widely expected, was hospitalised in Phnom Penh, authorities said. Iraq unrest * BAGHDAD – A roadside bomb attack targeting a US patrol near Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone killed two Iraqi civilians and wounded three, security officials said.Lebanon vote * BEIRUT – Lebanon’s political leaders were waiting for the country’s powerful Maronite cardinal to name presidential candidates amid a flurry of diplomatic efforts to break a damaging political deadlock.Tajikistan blast * DUSHANBE – A bomb shook a conference centre near Tajikistan’s presidential palace killing a security guard and scattering debris, just as a European Union-run conference was due to start.’Kill peacekeepers’ NAIROBI – A senior leader of Somalia’s Islamic insurgency has urged his fighters to attack and kill African Union peacekeepers in the war-battered nation, in rare public remarks attributed to him and posted on a Web site.Nampa-AFP-APIraq unrest * BAGHDAD – A roadside bomb attack targeting a US patrol near Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone killed two Iraqi civilians and wounded three, security officials said.Lebanon vote * BEIRUT – Lebanon’s political leaders were waiting for the country’s powerful Maronite cardinal to name presidential candidates amid a flurry of diplomatic efforts to break a damaging political deadlock.Tajikistan blast * DUSHANBE – A bomb shook a conference centre near Tajikistan’s presidential palace killing a security guard and scattering debris, just as a European Union-run conference was due to start.’Kill peacekeepers’ NAIROBI – A senior leader of Somalia’s Islamic insurgency has urged his fighters to attack and kill African Union peacekeepers in the war-battered nation, in rare public remarks attributed to him and posted on a Web site.Nampa-AFP-AP