World Scene

CUBA

Castro too sick for birthday gala

HAVANA — Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro said yesterday that he was not well enough to attend the opening of several days of events celebrating his 80th birthday.

“I’m not in medical condition to be there,” he said in a statement read by a presenter to thousands of supporters from dozens of countries at the start of a gala in Havana’s Karl Marx Theater that was to mark the opening of the celebrations.

His birthday was Aug. 13 but he postponed celebrations after undergoing emergency surgery that forced him to hand over power temporarily to his brother Raul in late July.

LEBANON

Militant leader dies in suicide attack

BEIRUT — A Syrian leader of an Islamic militant group blew himself up at a border post with Lebanon after a gunbattle with Syrian security forces yesterday, the Syrian government said. Two security force members were wounded.

Omar Abdullah, the 28-year-old leader of the Islamic militant group Tawhid and Jihad, was trying to enter Lebanon at the Jdeidet Yabous border post with fake documents, a Syrian Interior Ministry statement said.

The statement said Abdullah opened fire on security forces and tried to escape. After a chase, Abdullah detonated an explosive belt, killing himself and wounding the two Syrian security officers.

THAILAND

Martial law lifted in Bangkok

BANGKOK — Thailand’s military-installed government agreed yesterday to lift martial law in Bangkok and in more than half of the country’s provinces, the defense minister said.

Martial law was imposed after Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was overthrown Sept. 19 in a bloodless coup. Emergency powers will be maintained in Thailand’s southern provinces, which have been wracked by a Muslim insurgency, and in northern provinces seen to be supportive of Mr. Thaksin.

CHAD

Rebels shoot down military plane

N’DJAMENA — A Chadian military reconnaissance plane was shot down in eastern Chad yesterday, a government spokesman said, and a rebel group took responsibility.

The plane was downed in Chad’s volatile east, close to the Sudanese border, government spokesman Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor said. He did not provide other details.

SWEDEN

Abba museum to open in 2008

STOCKHOLM — A museum dedicated to the music and history of Swedish supergroup Abba will open in Stockholm in 2008, organizers said yesterday.

Abba is one of the most successful bands in history, having sold more than 370 million albums. While the group hasn’t performed together since 1982, it continues to sell nearly 3 million records a year, and the musical “Mamma Mia” — written by band members Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus and based on the group’s hits — has been seen by more than 27 million people around the world.

CHINA

Beijing reservoir water found unfit

BEIJING — Water from a reservoir that serves as Beijing’s fourth-biggest source of drinking water is unfit even for irrigation, state media reported yesterday, underlining the gravity of China’s water pollution problem.

The official Xinhua news agency cited a report by the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau as saying that water in the Guanting reservoir fell short of standards for level five on the country’s scale of water quality.

From wire dispatches and staff reports