Palestinian clashes leave 5 dead

Renewed factional fighting Wednesday between the rival Hamas and Fatah movements killed five Palestinians, including a 22-year-old woman. More than 10 others were wounded.

In the most brazen act, gunmen opened fire on a car and killed three men belonging to a security service loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, a leader of the secular Fatah party that lost parliamentary elections to Hamas almost a year ago. Fatah leaders blamed Hamas, a radical Islamic movement that does not recognize Israel, for the ambush in the Gaza city of Khan Younis.

A gunman from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Fatah's armed wing, was fatally shot north of Gaza City. A woman, Mona Salha, died after being wounded along with roughly a dozen others caught in a Hamas-Fatah skirmish in the same area.

After failing to form a power-sharing government with Hamas acceptable to international donors who provide nearly half the Palestinian government's annual budget, Abbas announced last month that he intends to call early elections, including for his own office. But he has yet to set a date for the vote, which Hamas officials have called an illegal attempt to overturn their election victory.

London

2 more show signs of polonium-210

Two more people have shown signs of low-level exposure to polonium-210, the rare radioactive isotope that killed former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, British health authorities said Wednesday.

The Health Protection Agency said the exposure was too slight to cause illness in the short term and the long-term risk was also very small.

The two were identified as a hotel worker at the Best Western Hotel in Piccadilly and a guest who visited The Pine Bar at London's Millennium Hotel. Ten other people in Britain have also tested positive for radioactivity, including eight staff members at the Millennium Hotel, one worker at the Sheraton Hotel in Park Lane and Litvinenko's wife, Marina.

Litvinenko, a Kremlin critic who lived in exile in Britain, died in a London hospital on Nov. 23 after suffering radiation poisoning. In a deathbed statement, he accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering his murder, an allegation the Kremlin has denied.

San Jose, Costa Rica

Fishermen found after 5 weeks adrift

Five Costa Rican fishermen stranded at sea survived on sea turtles and tuna for more than five weeks before they were rescued off the coast of El Salvador, authorities said Wednesday.

The fishermen, all but one of them teenagers, were rescued Sunday by a Polish-flagged merchant ship as their broken-down boat was slowly taking on water and sinking, said Costa Rican Public Security Ministry spokesman Ingrid Luna.

A few days after sailing in mid-November from the port of Playas del Coco in Costa Rica, the fishermen's 37-foot boat sustained mechanical problems that left it adrift, she said.

Also

Stranded sailor: The Chilean navy has launched a search-and-rescue operation for a California sailor adrift off the tip of South America while trying to circumnavigate the globe, officials said Wednesday. Ken Barnes of Newport Beach, Calif., set off from Long Beach on Oct. 28 in a 44-foot ketch called the Privateer. His longtime girlfriend, Cathy Chambers, said he called her Tuesday on his satellite phone to say he was in trouble.

Bomb link denied: Ousted Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra denied suggestions by the military and his army-appointed successor that he was linked to New Year's Eve bombings in Bangkok that killed three people and wounded 38.

Blast victim: Rescue workers discovered a body Wednesday in the rubble of a parking garage destroyed by a weekend car bombing at Madrid's airport, confirming the first fatality blamed on the Basque separatist group ETA in more than three years. Carlos Alonso Palate, 35, of Ecuador was believed to have been sleeping in a car when the bomb went off Saturday in the airport garage. A second Ecuadorean, Diego Armando Estacio, 19, who was also sleeping in a parked car, remains missing.

Seattle Times news services