World in brief

Hurricane Juan kills 2 in Canada

CHARLOTTETOWN, Prince Edward Island - Hurricane Juan lashed Nova Scotia with 86 mph winds Sunday, ripping off roofs, uprooting trees, knocking out power and killing two people before weakening to a tropical storm and heading to Prince Edward Island.

Voting proceeded as scheduled in Prince Edward Island's provincial election Monday, despite some areas being without power because of the storm. The storm weakened to a tropical depression and was headed out to sea, where it was expected to dissipate.

Farther south in the Atlantic, meanwhile, Hurricane Kate strengthened Monday as it swirled far from land; at 11 p.m., it was centered at latitude 30.4 N, longitude 35.0 W, or about 655 miles southwest of Lajes in the Azores Islands. Kate had maximum sustained winds of 75 mph and was moving toward the northeast at about 16 mph.

WASHINGTON - The United States has started to withdraw the military force sent for a brief peacekeeping deployment in Liberia, officials said Monday.

Two of three ships in a U.S. amphibious assault group left waters off Liberia's shore over the weekend. The third is expected to pull out at midweek as the United Nations takes over the peacekeeping mission manned by West Africans, the officials said.

The amphibious landing dock USS Carter Hall and amphibious transport dock USS Nashville started moving north in the Atlantic during the weekend and were likely to make a maintenance port call in Europe before heading home, defense officials said Monday.

That leaves the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima off Liberia's shore, with some 2,600 sailors and Marines aboard, and about 100 other American troops in Liberia, almost all providing security for the U.S. Embassy in the capital, Monrovia.

REBELS ADMIT KIDNAPPING: The National Liberation Army, the second-largest rebel group in Colombia, said Monday that it was holding seven foreign backpackers kidnapped this month from an archaeological site in the mountains. It was the first claim of responsibility for the abduction.

INQUIRY SOUGHT: Parents of Rachel Corrie, 23, of Olympia, Wash., who was killed this year in Gaza by an Israeli army bulldozer, called Monday for an independent U.S. investigation of her death.

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