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around 10 a.m. in a vegetable and fish market in the city of Diwaniyah, 130 kilometers (80 miles) south of Baghdad.
• He said 40 were wounded in the explosion and blamed Sunni insurgents linked to al-Qaida.
• ___

• WASHINGTON (AP) -- A chainsaw's buzz and the thump of logs striking grass disturbed the ordinary stillness of a leafy, well-to-do neighborhood in upper northwest Washington.
• A three-man contract crew for the utility company Pepco worked steadily to remove remnants of a tree that had fallen on a power line. A worker in a white hard hat, lifted by a crane some 50 feet in the air, used a saw to slice off leaves and branches from the wire. He chucked them to the ground or they fell on their own. But for a crew already working 16-hour days, feelings of success were short-lived.
• "From here we've got another complaint," crew member Jose Climaco said Monday. "As soon as we finish here, we have to go to another complaint."
• More than three days after a wave of violent thunderstorms wreaked havoc in parts of the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic, utility crews had restored electrical service to more than 1 million customers but were working Tuesday morning to turn on the lights -- and air-conditioning -- at nearly 1.8 million other homes and businesses.

• Utilities were warning that many neighborhoods could remain in the dark for much of the week, if not beyond. But public officials and residents were growing impatient.
• ___

• VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Pope Benedict XVI fired a 52-year-old Slovak bishop for apparently mismanaging his diocese in a rare show of papal power over bishops that could have implications for U.S. sex abuse cases.
• Usually when bishops run into trouble -- either for alleged moral lapses or management problems -- they are persuaded by the Vatican to resign. But Benedict has become increasingly willing to forcibly remove bishops who refuse to step down,

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