WEST AFRICA

Dozens of migrants trying to reach Europe spent three weeks at sea off West Africa and threw nearly 50 bodies overboard after their vessel lost power and supplies dwindled, officials said.

The boat, which set out from Senegal with as many as 150 people, was found by a Mauritanian patrol boat, a Spanish Civil Guard official said.

When the vessel was found, 100 people and two bodies were aboard, the official said.

Yahfdhou Ould Amar, a police chief in Mauritania, said 45 people died, presumably of hunger, cold and thirst.

Most of the group were Senegalese, officials said.

URUGUAY

Bill to ease laws on abortion wins nod

Uruguay's Senate voted to ease the country's tough abortion laws, although President Tabare Vazquez has vowed to veto any legislation that seeks to decriminalize the procedure. Women in the country are allowed to have an abortion only if they were raped or if the pregnancy endangers their lives.

The bill would allow abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy on grounds that include economic or social hardship or "circumstances linked to how the conception took place."

TURKEY

National identity law to be changed

Turkey's government will change a law that was used to prosecute an internationally known author, the justice minister said.

Turkey, which hopes to join the European Union, will soften the law that makes denigrating Turkish identity or insulting the country's institutions a crime punishable by as much as three years in prison. The EU has said it does not fit within the bloc's standards of free speech.

Author Orhan Pamuk, who later was awarded the Nobel Prize, became one of the highest-profile Turks snared by the law when he commented on the genocide of Armenians by Ottoman forces in the early 20th century. Turkey says the toll has been inflated and the deaths were the result of civil unrest. The case against Pamuk was dropped after several months.

UNITED NATIONS

Material in office ruled harmless

Tests by U.S. authorities have confirmed that substances found in a U.N. office and at first feared to be a chemical weapon from Iraq were harmless, the United Nations said.

A scare erupted after material believed to have been taken from Iraq 11 years ago by U.N. weapons inspectors was found Aug. 24 as the inspectors were closing their offices near the main U.N. headquarters in New York City.

The U.N. said at the time it had found papers indicating the substances included phosgene, a chemical that attacks the lungs and was used in World War I.

INDIA

Doctors remove girl's extra limbs

An extensive operation on a 2-year-old girl born with four arms and four legs went "wonderfully well," doctors said today in Bangalore, India, as they announced that she was safe and stable after more than 24 hours of surgery.

A team of 30 doctors successfully removed the child's extra limbs and rebuilt her pelvis area, Dr. Sharan Patil said.

The girl is named Lakshmi, after the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth.

Her parents say she is revered in her village in the northeastern state of Bihar.

"Everybody considers her a goddess at our village," said her father, Shambhu, who goes by one name.

From Times Wire Reports