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Mr John Howard continued as Prime Minister of Australia, his fourth term, when his conservative Liberal party won an increased majority; it had opposed withdrawal from Iraq and proposed non-statist social service policies. In Sadr City, a poor suburb of Baghdad, Shiite militia followers of Muqtada al-Sadr handed in only a few machine-guns, grenade-launchers and mortars at the beginning of a five-day arms amnesty in return for an American offer not to bomb the district. Videos were posted on the Internet showing the beheading by the Tawhid wal Jihad group, said to be commanded by Abu Musab al-Zarkawi, of Kenneth Bigley, a British man abducted on 16 September in Baghdad, and the next day of a Turkish contractor and a Kurdish translator by a different group. At least 28 abducted foreigners have been killed in Iraq; thousands of Iraqis have been abducted. Mr Donald Rumsfeld, the American secretary of state, visited Baghdad. Saudi Arabia announced that women will be allowed neither to stand nor to vote in next year’s first nationwide elections for municipal posts. In Afghanistan, a commission investigated claims by opponents of President Hamid Karzai that electors could wipe off ink-stamps on thumbs intended to prevent multiple voting. Jacques Derrida, the deconstructionist philosopher, died, aged 74. Christopher Reeve, who played Superman in films and was paralysed in a riding accident, died, aged 52. A ban on Muslim headscarves in schools imposed by the German state of Baden W
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