US Disease brewed by Hurricane Katrina claimed its first victims, officials said, as political polemics sharpened over the federal response to the country's worst natural disaster. Mideast The security chaos blighting the Gaza Strip claimed its highest-profile victim when local strongman Mussa Arafat, an advisor to Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas, was assassinated by militants. US-UN-Iraq UN chief Kofi Annan said that he assumed responsibility for serious management lapses in the oil-for-food program for Iraq, but the head of an independent probe into the scandal said member states and the Security Council must share the blame. UN Central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are being left behind in human development, hampered by inequality and unfair trade policies, and world leaders must act to help them tackle grinding poverty, a UN report said. Egypt Egyptians voted in the country's first contested presidential election with veteran leader Hosni Mubarak all but certain to head off all challengers amid reports of widespread irregularities. Iraq US-led forces freed an American contractor kidnapped in Iraq 10 months ago after raiding an isolated farmhouse south of Baghdad on a tip-off from an Iraqi prisoner. Algeria Algeria's Prime Minister Ahmed Ouhayia has said some 1,000 armed Muslim fundamentalists are still at large in his country, which is due to vote in a referendum on a peace plan to finally end years of insurgency. India-Britain British Prime Minister Tony Blair, warming up for next week's summit of world leaders at the United Nations in New York, called for the world to confront incitement to terrorism as firmly as it does terrorism itself. EU-China European Union member states gave their green light to a deal to release millions of cheap Chinese clothes blocked at European ports as early as next week, officials said. Britain Britain urged the EU to do more to fight terror after the London bombings, including rethinking how human rights laws are applied, despite warnings that civil liberties should not be eroded. EU European Union experts agreed on the need for a Europe-wide blacklist of unsafe airlines after a recent spate of fatal crashes around the world. Iran Iran is to challenge a tough report on its nuclear programme by the UN's atomic energy watchdog as it contains "errors" and makes "unacceptable" demands of the Islamic republic, a senior official told AFP.