France French voters massively rejected the EU's first-ever constitution, dealing a slap in the face to President Jacques Chirac and a potentially fatal setback to the continent's ambitious plans for deeper political union. China China decided to abolish export tariffs on 81 categories of textile products, escalating trade tensions with the European Union and United States which have been swamped by cheap Chinese imports. Iraq Thousands of Iraqi forces have thrown a security net over Baghdad to snare insurgents, who quickly struck back with a string of car bombings said to have been masterminded by Al-Qaeda's Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Lebanon Saad Hariri, the son of murdered former premier Rafiq Hariri, claimed a clean sweep of all 19 seats in Beirut in the first phase parliamentary elections, the first in three decades free of Syria's grip. US-Guantanamo America's top military officer, General Richard Myers, slammed as "absolutely irresponsible" a report by Amnesty International describing the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as a "gulag." Mideast The Israeli government approved the release of 400 Palestinian prisoners and declared itself ready to allow the United States to mediate a coordinated pullout from Gaza with the Palestinians. Iran-Pakistan Pakistan denied that President Pervez Musharraf had said Tehran was keen to obtain a nuclear bomb, a claim that infuriated Tehran's clerical regime which has repeatedly denied any such ambitions. Malta An Islamic militant group operating in Chechnya posted an Internet statement saying it was holding a Maltese hostage and would execute him after seizing him in Europe with intelligence on rebel groups in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Brazil Main avenues of Brazil's financial capital were jammed with some two million dancers and revelers during the ninth annual Gay Pride parade, the biggest of its kind in the world. Japan-Philippines Japan said it was considering withdrawing its diplomats from the insurgency-wracked Philippine island of Mindanao amid doubts over a middleman who reported finding two lost World War II soldiers.