Heart attack fells Jelic,
president of Serb Republic
BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Milan Jelic, president of Bosnia's Serb Republic died of a heart attack Sunday after less than a year on the job, the prime minister said. He was 51. Jelic suffered a heart attack while watching a soccer game in his hometown, Modrica, his brother Slavko Jelic said in Serbia. The president was a former soccer player himself and was president of Bosnia's Soccer Federation.
Jelic was elected president of the Serb Republic — one of the two mini-states that make up Bosnia and Herzegovina — in October 2006. The other republic is the Bosniak-Croat Federation. The presidency is a largely ceremonial position, with power lying in the hands of the government and its prime minister. Born in 1956 in north Bosnia, Jelic earned a doctorate in economics and was the head of the Modrica oil refinery for 13 years.
Woman gives birth
to her twin grandchildren
SAO PAULO, Brazil — A 51-year-old surrogate mother for her daughter has given birth to her own twin grandchildren in northeastern Brazil, the delivery hospital said. Rosinete Palmeira Serrao, a government health worker, gave birth to twin boys by Caesarean section Thursday at the Santa Joana Hospital in the city of Recife, the hospital said in a statement.
Serrao decided to serve as a surrogate mother after four years of failed attempts at pregnancy by her 27-year-old daughter, Claudia Michelle de Brito. Brazilian law stipulates that only close relatives can serve as surrogate mothers.
De Brito is an only child and none of her cousins volunteered, so Serrao agreed to receive four embryos from her daughter.
Pro-Western allies ahead
in election in Ukraine
KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine's pro-Western Orange Revolution allies made a strong combined showing in Sunday's parliamentary elections and looked poised to win a majority that could allow them to unseat Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, an exit poll showed. The election was called early in an attempt to end a standoff between Yanukovych and President Viktor Yushchenko and shake sense into the ex-Soviet nation's politics after years of infighting.
The independent poll showed Yanukovych's bloc was the top vote-getter with 35.5 percent, but Yulia Tymoshenko, the fiery Orange Revolution heroine, followed closely with 31.5 percent.
Yushchenko's party was trailing a distant third with 13.4 percent.
Still no sign of Fossett
LAS VEGAS — Teams on the ground and in two aircraft kept up the hunt for millionaire aviator Steve Fossett on Sunday after a new analysis of radar data provided fresh optimism. The formal aerial search by the Civil Air Patrol and the Nevada National Guard had ended Sept. 19 after more than two weeks of scouring a rugged area of deserts and mountains.
However, analysis of radar data and satellite images from Sept. 3, the day Fossett disappeared in a small plane, led Air Force technicians to believe they had spotted clues to his route.
Fossett, 63, was the first person to circle the globe solo in a balloon.
He also swam the English Channel, completed the Iditarod sled-dog race and scaled some of the world's best-known peaks.
U.N. envoy fails to meet
with top junta leaders
YANGON, Myanmar — A U.N. envoy failed to meet with Myanmar's top two junta leaders in his effort to persuade them to ease a violent crackdown on anti-government protesters, but was allowed a highly orchestrated session Sunday with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
The military government, meanwhile, flooded the main city of Yangon with troops, swelling their numbers to about 20,000 by Sunday and ensuring that almost all demonstrators would remain off the streets, a diplomat said.
First day on new job
WASHINGTON — Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is troubled by the Iraq war. He thinks it has become such a consuming focus of U.S. attention that it may be overstretching the military and distracting the nation from other threats. When he steps into his new office in Room 2E676 at the Pentagon today, replacing Marine Gen. Peter Pace as the senior military adviser to the president and the defense secretary, Mullen, 60, already will be on record expressing his war worries with an unusual degree of candor. "I understand the frustration over the war. I share it," he told his Senate confirmation hearing July 31.
Associated Press