SAINT-MARC, Haiti -- Far-reaching Tropical Storm Hanna drenched flood-plagued Haiti yesterday, adding to the miseries of a country that has lost 110 lives to mudslides and flooding since mid-August.

The storm that had been drifting south and east finally swung toward the north-northwest yesterday. It was expected to sweep across the Bahamas and then start climbing along the U.S. coastline by the weekend, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Haitian authorities yesterday reported five more deaths caused by Hanna, raising the toll to 26.

Floodwaters swamped a hospital in the Les Cayes area, forcing nurses to move patients to higher floors. At least 5,000 people in Les Cayes remained in shelters, authorities said .

TORONTO -- A chunk of ice shelf nearly the size of Manhattan has broken away from Ellesmere Island in Canada's northern Arctic, another dramatic indication of how warmer temperatures are changing the polar frontier, scientists said yesterday.

Derek Mueller, an Arctic ice shelf specialist at Trent University in Ontario, told The Associated Press that the 4,500-year-old Markham Ice Shelf separated in early August and the 19-square-mile shelf is now adrift in the Arctic Ocean.

This comes on the heels of unusual cracks in a northern Greenland glacier, rapid melting of a southern Greenland glacier, and a near record loss for Arctic sea ice this summer. And earlier this year a 160-square mile chunk of an Antarctic ice shelf disintegrated.

DAMASCUS, Syria -- French President Nicolas Sarkozy encouraged Syria to pursue face-to-face peace talks with Israel during his first trip yesterday to the Arab nation -- a visit also aimed at undercutting Iranian influence in Damascus.

After discussions with President Bashar Assad, Mr. Sarkozy said France was ready to sponsor direct Syria-Israel talks "when the time comes" and would help in any way it could, if asked.

The French leader has tried to forge better relations with both Syria and Libya -- countries some other Western powers have been reluctant to engage with.

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SEOUL, South Korea -- South Korea said yesterday that North Korea had begun restoring its nuclear facilities. But the U.S. played it down, saying the country apparently only moved some equipment out of storage.

The North said last week it had stopped dismantling its nuclear reactor on Aug. 14 because Washington had not held up its end of their disarmament deal -- a promise to remove North Korea from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. At the same time, the North threatened to restore the nuclear facility.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said in a new report that North Korea had already removed "essential" equipment from its nuclear facilities by the time it decided to stop disabling them last month, suggesting it would take some time to restore its main reactor to an operational state.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul will travel to Armenia to watch a soccer match between the countries' national teams, his office said yesterday, in a sign of a thaw in relations between the two historic foes ...The Irish Republican Army is fading away in Northern Ireland and poses no security threat to the British territory, international experts concluded yesterday in another landmark for peacemaking.