Mideast Palestinians began voting to elect a successor to their historic leader Yasser Arafat with his longtime deputy Mahmud Abbas widely expected to romp home to victory. Mideast Hamas and Islamic Jihad members vowed to obey orders from their Islamist groups to boycott the Palestinian election as frontrunner Mahmud Abbas urged a massive turnout to bolster his legitmacy. Asia Thousands more tsunami deaths recorded on the tip of Sumatra brought the death toll to just over 156,000 as the world's top economic powers agreed to freeze the debts of disaster-hit countries to free up money for the massive reconstruction effort. Indonesia Concerns remained that an unknown number of tsunami survivors in Indonesia's Aceh province have not received any aid, two weeks after the disaster that killed more than 104,000 people there. Iraq A US warplane bombed a house mistaken for an insurgency hideout in northern Iraq, killing at least five people, while a car bomb killed one, and four Iraqi officials were kidnapped in the run-up to national elections. Sudan US Secretary of State Colin Powell called for redoubled efforts to end violence in Sudan's Darfur region but was silent on a new UN report calling for urgent action to stem worsening bloodshed there. Europe At least eight people were killed, more than 1,000 homes were flooded and 330,000 others left without power as violent storms swept through northern Europe, bringing hurricane force winds and heavy rain. US US military planes and ships rushed to help the US nuclear submarine San Francisco after it ran aground in the Pacific injuring about 20 crew, one seriously, the US Navy said. US-Iraq A US army sergeant was sentenced to six months jail for ordering soldiers to push two Iraqis into the Tigris river, but a military jury earlier cleared him of charges of manslaughter. Italy The death toll from a head-on collision of a passenger train and a freight train near the northern Italian city of Bologna rose to 17 as questions were raised over the safety of the Italian rail system. Bosnia-Serbs Bosnian Serb President Dragan Cavic named Pero Bukejlovic of the ruling nationalists as the entity's next prime minister and asked him to form a government.