WASHINGTON -- Conditions in the western Iraqi province of Anbar, where a brutal insurgency once ruled, have improved so dramatically that the United States is handing over responsibility for security in the Sunni stronghold to Iraq within days. Troops freed up in Iraq could shift to Afghanistan.

A ceremony marking the Anbar turnover is expected to be held Monday, several U.S. and Iraqi officials said. Each spoke on condition of anonymity because the Iraqi government has not yet announced it. Anbar would be the 10th of Iraq's 18 provinces to be returned to Iraqi government control, a step toward phasing out the American combat role as Iraqi security forces grow more competent.

MONROVIA, Liberia -- A former Liberian warlord whose drugged fighters once appeared on camera holding up a human heart dodged questions Wednesday and refused to accept any wrongdoing during an appearance before a public commission.

Sekou Conneh is the former head of the rebel group that encircled Liberia's capital and heavily shelled it in the final months of Liberia's 14-year conflict in 2003.

Conneh appeared before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and argued he should be treated as a hero for having launched the attack that led to the defeat of President Charles Taylor, himself on trial for war crimes at The Hague, Netherlands.

Taylor's forces have been accused of numerous atrocities -- including eating the hearts of their slain enemies. But the rebel group Conneh led is also blamed for barbaric actions.

Besides shelling the capital, the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy is tied to massacres of entire villages. The group's siege of Monrovia led to so many deaths that Liberians began piling up the bodies in front of the U.S. Embassy in a plea for help.

MOSCOW -- Russia could cut poultry and pork import quotas by hundreds of thousands of tons, the country's agriculture minister said Wednesday. The move could hit American producers hard and comes amid heightened tensions between Moscow and Washington over the war in ex-Soviet Georgia.

"It is time to change the quota regime and reduce imports, which have unfortunately built up in recent years," Alexei Gordeyev told reporters, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency.

He said domestic producers could make up the shortfall if imports were reduced.

Any substantial cuts would likely have a significant impact on U.S. poultry producers, for whom Russia is the biggest market. Russians sometimes refer to U.S. poultry imports as "Bush's legs," a reference to the frozen chicken shipped to Russia amid economic troubles following the 1991 Soviet collapse, when the current U.S. president's father was in office.

TRIPOLI, Libya -- Two Sudanese men, armed with handguns and the threat of explosives, stormed the cockpit of the Boeing 737, taking control just minutes into the flight. Passengers said the hijackers remained calm but they still spent a night in fear.

Once on the ground at a remote Libyan airfield, the hijackers demanded maps and enough fuel to reach France. But after 22 hours, the standoff ended Wednesday with the 95 passengers and crew let go and the gunmen surrendering in a run-down VIP lounge with a plea for asylum.

Passengers and officials at the airport in southeastern Libya said the men identified themselves as members of a Darfur rebel group -- the Sudan Liberation Movement, which promptly denied any involvement.

But Murtada Hassan, executive director of Sun Air, which owns the jetliner, said their motives were personal and they had no connection with any political or rebel groups. He would not elaborate.

The hijackers, Darfuri men in their 40s, made no political demands.

"Their first demand was France. ... Then they negotiated for Libyan asylum. Then they had no other solution -- there was no escape," said Mohammed Al-Balla Othman, Sudan's consul in the desert oasis of Kufra, where the plane landed Tuesday.

It was unclear whether their asylum request would be granted.

TOKYO -- Fifty-five percent of people think "women can lead a happy life without marrying," while 39 percent do not share this view, according to a survey conducted by The Yomiuri Shimbun as part of a yearlong series of polls about the Japanese.

This is a marked increase from the 26 percent of respondents who answered likewise regarding a similar question asked in 1978. In that survey, 50 percent disagreed with the statement.

This shows a pronounced change over the past 30 years in the way people perceive marriage. "Views on marriage" was the theme of the survey conducted via face-to-face interviews on Aug. 9-10.

Thirty percent agreed with the statement "It is desirable for men to concentrate on work, and for women to devote themselves to the home after marriage," while 68 percent disagreed.

The 1978 survey asked people whether "men pursuing a career and women looking after a home and family brought happiness to both." Seventy-one percent of respondents agreed and 22 percent did not.

The view that a man should work while his wife stays at home has rapidly lost public support. In contrast, 65 percent of people agreed in the current survey that "it is better to get married," compared with 33 percent supporting the view "it is not always necessary to get married."

JERUSALEM -- Scientists using American space technology have started a huge project to digitally photograph the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest known version of the Hebrew Bible, and post it on the Internet for all to see, Israeli authorities said Wednesday.

High-tech cameras using infrared photography are being used to uncover sections of the 2,000-year-old scrolls that have faded over the centuries and become indecipherable, the Israeli Antiquities Authority said.

The project is expected to take about five years and the goal is to make the scrolls accessible to scientists and the general public, Antiquities Authority official Pnina Shor said.

"Now for the first time the scrolls will be a computer click away," said Shor, who heads the authority's department responsible for the conservation of artifacts.

"This will ensure that the scrolls are preserved for another 2,000 years."

Experts have complained for years that only a small number of scholars have been allowed access to the scrolls and the thousands of fragments that were found in caves near the Dead Sea in the late 1940s. In recent years, steps have been taken to widen access, but many of the findings are still not properly identified and categorized.

To protect the scrolls, Shor said, the new imaging will be done in a setting that minimizes exposure to light.

A pilot project started Wednesday and when it is finished, it will be possible to determine how long it will take to digitize the thousands of fragments from about 900 separate documents, Shor said, estimating five years.

BEIJING -- The death toll following an explosion at a chemical plant in southwest China has reached 18 with 60 people injured and two workers still missing, local media said on Wednesday.

Two of the dead have yet to be formally identified, but 16 of the bodies are reported to be plant workers. The plant owner said that two employees are still missing following the fire, which occurred early Tuesday morning in Yizhou city, in Guangxi province.

Firefighters tackling the blaze managed to extinguish the fire Tuesday evening. The regional environmental department said no chemical leaks had occurred at the plant, which mainly produces chemicals for adhesives and paints.

Zimbabwe opposition: Mugabe will fail alone

HARARE, Zimbabwe-- Zimbabwe's opposition accused President Robert Mugabe of abandoning talks aimed at forming a unity government, and said Wednesday he would fail if he tried to rule alone.

State media said Mugabe had announced Tuesday he was soon to form a new Cabinet after concluding the opposition Movement for Democratic Change did not want to take part. Coalition negotiations have been deadlocked over how much control Mugabe should surrender.

Opposition spokesman Nelson Chamisa said Wednesday the Movement for Democratic Change remained committed to power-sharing talks, but accused Mugabe of "giving a death certificate ... to the talks and negotiations."

"The bottom line is he has to come to the negotiating table and negotiate with the MDC as representatives of the people of the country to find a way forward," Chamisa said.

Among recent steps Mugabe has taken that the opposition says undermine negotiations was the appointment of his loyalists as senators and governors. The opposition also says Mugabe should not have unilaterally convened parliament on Tuesday, and accuses him of ordering the arrests of its members to try to regain a parliamentary majority. Police have arrested five opposition lawmakers allegedly linked to political violence.

Chinese defend accused police killer

SHANGHAI, China -- The murder case was supposed to be simple: A jobless man accused of killing six police officers in a rare stabbing rampage in China's largest city.

But the Chinese public surprised authorities, sympathizing with Yang Jia despite the violent attack and asking whether he was driven to his alleged crime by police abuse of power.

Concerns grew when a state media report said Yang tried but failed to sue Shanghai police for psychological damage he claimed to have suffered during an interrogation last year -- indicating the killings were in revenge.

Several Chinese papers have hinted that Yang was wronged and demanded a fair trial. But some say he didn't get one, pointing out that his assigned lawyer works for the same government that oversees the police station where the officers were killed.

Shanghai media this week have been silent on the increasingly sensitive trial, which was delayed until the Olympics were over. The verdict, reached Tuesday as reporters hovered outside the closed courtroom, hasn't been announced. A death sentence is likely.

"That's the so-called 'open, fair trial,' " Yan Lieshan, editor of the respected Southern Weekly newspaper, said Wednesday. "I think people get what's going on."

Chinese have grown increasingly aware of their legal rights in recent years, but justice remains elusive. The country continues to have problems with closed trials and a lack of due process. Only this summer, criminal defense lawyers got the right to meet with their clients without official permission, request evidence from prosecutors and call witnesses in court.

Dead Sea Scrolls to be displayed on Internet

JERUSALEM -- Scientists using American space technology have started a huge project to digitally photograph the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest known version of the Hebrew Bible, and post it on the Internet for all to see, Israeli authorities said Wednesday.

High-tech cameras using infrared photography are being used to uncover sections of the 2,000-year-old scrolls that have faded over the centuries and become indecipherable, the Israeli Antiquities Authority said.

The project is expected to take about five years and the goal is to make the scrolls accessible to scientists and the general public, Antiquities Authority official Pnina Shor said.

"Now for the first time the scrolls will be a computer click away," said Shor, who heads the authority's department responsible for the conservation of artifacts. "This will ensure that the scrolls are preserved for another 2,000 years."

Experts have complained for years that only a small number of scholars have been allowed access to the scrolls and the thousands of fragments that were found in caves near the Dead Sea in the late 1940s. In recent years, steps have been taken to widen access, but many of the findings are still not properly identified and categorized.

To protect the scrolls, Shor said, the new imaging will be done in a setting that minimizes exposure to light.

A pilot project started Wednesday and when it is finished, it will be possible to determine how long it will take to digitize the thousands of fragments from about 900 separate documents, Shor said, estimating five years.

Zimbabwe opposition: Mugabe will fail alone

HARARE, Zimbabwe-- Zimbabwe's opposition accused President Robert Mugabe of abandoning talks aimed at forming a unity government, and said Wednesday he would fail if he tried to rule alone.

State media said Mugabe had announced Tuesday he was soon to form a new Cabinet after concluding the opposition Movement for Democratic Change did not want to take part. Coalition negotiations have been deadlocked over how much control Mugabe should surrender.

Opposition spokesman Nelson Chamisa said Wednesday the Movement for Democratic Change remained committed to power-sharing talks, but accused Mugabe of "giving a death certificate ... to the talks and negotiations."

"The bottom line is he has to come to the negotiating table and negotiate with the MDC as representatives of the people of the country to find a way forward," Chamisa said.

Among recent steps Mugabe has taken that the opposition says undermine negotiations was the appointment of his loyalists as senators and governors. The opposition also says Mugabe should not have unilaterally convened parliament on Tuesday, and accuses him of ordering the arrests of its members to try to regain a parliamentary majority. Police have arrested five opposition lawmakers allegedly linked to political violence.