Around the World

Search for bodies underway in Austria

KAPRUN, Austria - Rescue workers braved toxic fumes and unstable wreckage Sunday to begin retrieving the charred remains of at least 155 skiers and snowboarders, including eight Americans, from the grisly tomb under Kitzsteinhorn mountain where they suffocated and burned to death a day earlier in the worst Alpine disaster in modern history.

Officials conceded that they were still uncertain of the exact number of people trapped in a cable car consumed by flames half a mile into a 2-mile-long mountain tunnel. The list of names of presumed victims - still being withheld pending family notifications - was compiled from reports by friends of those known to have gone up the mountain early Saturday and who never returned.

The suspected death toll from Saturday's disaster was initially set at about 170, based on what appeared to be a full load of passengers in the 180-person-capacity funicular train car from which only eight were known at the time to have escaped. In addition, three people waiting at the upper lift station died from smoke inhalation. But authorities raised the number of survivors to 12 on Sunday and speculated that the lack of further missing-person reports could mean the car was carrying closer to 165 passengers.

Ethnic groups show splits in elections

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Defying foreign pressure, voters from all three of Bosnia's ethnic groups have given strong support in general elections to hard-line nationalists.

The first official results from Saturday's vote left foreign observers here shaking their heads at the setback to efforts to build a stable, multiethnic democracy. The reversal came nearly five years after the peace accords were reached in Dayton, Ohio, in 1995.