WORLD BRIEFS

BRITAIN: 5 bishops to convert to Catholicism

Five Anglican bishops announced Monday they will accept an offer from Pope Benedict XVI to convert to Catholicism, primarily over their opposition to the Church of England's decision to ordain female bishops. The five, in a joint statement, spoke of their distress at developments in the Anglican church that they felt were "incompatible with the historic vocation of Anglicanism and the tradition of the Church for nearly two thousand years." The five bishops turned to Pope Benedict, asking for a structure within the Catholic Church that would enable them to hold onto certain of their rituals and practices. In Vatican City, meanwhile, the church announced that the pope has summoned cardinals from around the world to a daylong summit in Rome next week on the clerical sex abuse scandal and other issues facing the Catholic church.

AUSTRALIA: Leaks in 3 Airbus engines

Tests have uncovered oil leaks in three Rolls-Royce engines on Qantas' grounded Airbus A380s, the airline's chief executive said Monday in Sydney, as engineers tried to identify the cause of an engine failure last week on one of the carrier's superjumbo jets. Australia's national carrier grounded its six double-decker A380s, the newest and largest airliner, after an engine burst minutes into a flight from Singapore to Sydney last week, scattering debris over Batam island in Indonesia. The plane made a safe emergency landing in Singapore.

IRAQ: Bombs kill 20 in Shia cities

Car bombs struck three Shia cities in the south Monday, killing more than 20 people in an apparent move to derail progress toward forming a new government as political leaders tried to break the eight-month deadlock. The blasts in the holy cities of Karbala and Najaf and in Iraq's second largest city, Basra, were the third major attacks since last week, after the slaughter of 50 Christians in a Baghdad church and a string of 13 coordinated bombings across Baghdad that killed more than 90 people.

HAITI: Cholera feared in capital

Health officials said Monday they are examining at least 120 suspected cases of cholera in Port-au-Prince, the most significant sign yet that the epidemic may have spread from outlying areas to threaten as many as 3 million people. Samples from patients in the capital are being tested to confirm the presence of vibrio cholera bacteria, which has already killed at least 544 people in Haiti, Health Ministry Executive Director Gabriel Timothée told The Associated Press.