JERUSALEM - Israel on Thursday protested rising European contacts with Hamas, urging the EU to keep the group on its list of terrorist organizations and warning that talking to the Islamic militants undermines Palestinian moderates.
Three senior Hamas members said their group has been talking to European Union diplomats regularly. EU officials denied the contacts, but acknowledged that meetings with Hamas may be inevitable now that Hamas won control of dozens of West Bank and Gaza towns in recent local elections.
"We believe Europeans should be strengthening moderate Palestinians and not appeasing the extremists," said Israel Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev.
Copter search for missing Ala. teen finds nothing
ORANJESTAD, Aruba - A helicopter was used to search for the body of an Alabama teenager as investigators sifted through items seized from the island home of a justice official whose son was with the young woman the same night she disappeared, officials said Thursday.
Meanwhile, a judge considered a petition from the justice official, Paul van der Sloot, to see his jailed son, Joran, 17. More than two weeks after Natalee Holloway, 18, vanished, searches by authorities, volunteer islanders and tourists have led nowhere, and no one has been charged.
In Washington . . .
FOREIGN AID: Rebuffing President Bush's wishes, a Republican-led House panel slashed the administration's request for a program that aids global development. Bush requested $3-billion in the fiscal 2006 budget for the Millennium Challenge Account, but the House Foreign Operations Subcommittee on Thursday recommended $1.75-billion, which is $262-million more than last year.
SECURITY COUNCIL EXPANSION: On Thursday, the Bush administration supported a measured expansion of the Security Council, but said widespread reform of the United Nations takes precedence. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cited management, peace-building and halting the proliferation of dangerous weapons technology.
U.N. REFORM: Defying the administration, the Republican-led House on Thursday took up legislation that would drastically limit the U.S. financial commitment to the United Nations.
The U.S. would withhold half of its dues if the organization failed to carry out specific changes, according to the proposal sponsored by GOP Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois, chairman of the House International Relations Committee.
Among the royals . . .
BRITAIN: Britain's defense minister ordered an investigation Thursday into security at the military school where Prince Harry is training, after a newspaper said one of its journalists, who had a camera and a fake bomb, gained access.
The Sun tabloid said one of its reporters posed as a student to get permission to use the library at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in Surrey, where Prince Charles' younger son is an officer cadet.
The journalist spent some eight hours wandering the grounds and took video of Prince Harry, stills from which were published in the newspaper. He also built what the Sun called a fake bomb, with wires, plasticine, a battery and clock in his car while at the academy, the newspaper said.
Clarence House, the office of Prince Harry's father, Prince Charles, said the cadet shown in the video was not Prince Harry.
NORWAY: The youngest member of Norway's royal family, named Leah in part after Star Wars character Princess Leia, was baptized Thursday at a palace chapel. Princess Martha Louise and writer Ari Behn's second child, Leah Isadora Behn, was born April 8 and is fifth in line for the throne, although she has no royal title.
