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Banned group gains seats in Egypt

By wire services
Published November 28, 2005

CAIRO - The outlawed Muslim Brotherhood captured 29 more seats in weekend parliamentary runoff elections, the group and Interior Ministry officials said Sunday, meaning the organization will control at least five times more seats in the new legislature than it does now.

The stunning result after the second round of voting was achieved despite low turnout, irregularities and clashes with police in what appeared to be a determined government effort to block opposition voters and curb the Islamic-based organization.

The Higher Election Committee said final results showed 115 candidates won seats in Saturday's runoffs from round two of the polling - 75 for the ruling National Democratic Party; 38 to independents; and two for the New Wafd opposition party.

Senior Brotherhood official Ali Abdel Fattah said Sunday that 29 of the winning independents were members of the group, which gets around an official ban by fielding its candidates as independents.

MIAMI - Tropical Storm Delta gained strength in the central Atlantic on Sunday but was expected to weaken before reaching the Canary Islands, forecasters said.

Delta, the 25th named storm of the record 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, had top sustained wind near 70 mph, 4 mph shy of hurricane strength, the National Hurricane Center said.

At 4 p.m. EST, Delta was centered about 645 miles west of La Palma in the Canary Islands and was moving northeast at about 26 mph.

It was expected to lose the characteristics of a tropical storm before reaching the Canary Islands off the northwestern coast of Africa today but still could have strong winds, the hurricane center said.

The six-month Atlantic hurricane season officially ends Wednesday, but tropical storms and hurricanes occasionally develop in December.

HARBIN, China - Running water returned to this northeast city of 3.8-million people Sunday, ending a five-day shutdown blamed on a chemical spill that embarrassed the government and highlighted China's mounting environmental problems.

Water service started returning to this provincial capital shortly before 6 p.m. after the government said toxins spewed into the Songhua River by a chemical plant explosion had returned to safe levels.

Local television showed the governor of Heilongjiang province, where Harbin is located, drinking water from the tap in a Harbin family's home after service resumed. But the government said it would announce on radio and television when the water was safe enough first to bathe in and later to drink.

NEW DELHI - Gopal Vinayak Godse, the last surviving conspirator in the assassination of the Indian independence leader and pacifist icon Mohandas Gandhi, has died. He was 86.

Mr. Godse died at his home in the city of Pune late Saturday (Nov. 26, 2005), the Press Trust of India news agency quoted his son Nana Godse as saying. No cause of death was given.

Mr. Godse was part of the group that attacked Gandhi as the frail 78-year-old walked toward the prayer ground in the garden of a New Delhi home on Jan. 30, 1948. Mr. Godse's brother Nathuram stepped in front of Gandhi and fired three shots. Nathuram Godse and another man were hanged for Gandhi's slaying, while Mr. Godse served 16 years in prison.

Mr. Godse and his small band of Hindu extremists believed Gandhi turned his back on Hindus, allowing British India to be divided in 1947 into India and Pakistan following independence. They also thought Gandhi's calls for nonviolence were part of a plot to allow Hindus to be slaughtered by Muslims.

"We did not want this man to live," Mr. Godse told the Associated Press in 2003. "We did not want this man to die a natural death, even if 10 lives were to be lost for that purpose."

[Last modified November 28, 2005, 01:05:08]