Water used to come through the taps in Tabata, a sprawling suburb of whitewashed bungalows in Tanzania’s biggest city, Dar es Salaam. But these days the taps and steel water pipes stand empty in backyards while families send their children to fetch water from a well.

Links have been discovered between senior American military officials and the failed coup plot in Equatorial Guinea that has left Mark Thatcher facing trial in South Africa. Theresa Whelan, a member of the Bush administration in charge of African affairs at the Pentagon, twice met a London-based businessman, Greg Wales, in Washington before the coup attempt.

Two British Muslim leaders on Sunday began in earnest their attempt to secure the freedom of the hostage Ken Bigley by meeting senior Iraqi political leaders in Baghdad. Afterward, Daud Abdullah, the assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council, said Bigley’s captors would be forgiven for all their ”wrong-doing” if they released him.

Hamas on Sunday promised vengeance against Israel for its assassination of one of the Palestinian group’s members in the Syrian capital of Damascus. Izz el-Deen al-Sheik Khalil was killed when his car exploded as he turned the ignition on Sunday morning. Israeli government sources told the Associated Press that it was responsible, although the government made no official comment.