World Briefing: Asia, Europe and Africa

ASIA

AFGHANISTAN: ROCKET ATTACK ON SCHOOL KILLS 7 CHILDREN Seven schoolchildren in Kunar Province, bordering Pakistan, were killed when a rocket slammed into their class as they were studying under the shade of trees, said the provincial governor, Asadullah Wafa. Twelve other pupils and a teacher were wounded. The governor said the rocket had been fired from the direction of Pakistan and blamed Taliban rebels and their allies for the attack. The Taliban have been running a campaign of violence against schools and teachers in southern Afghanistan. But a Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, contacted by satellite telephone, denied involvement in yesterday's attack, saying, "The mujahedeen are not killing children." The Kunar attack was near Asadabad, the provincial capital, and close to a United States military base. Because the weather was hot, the children were sitting outside. Those killed and wounded were mostly 5- and 6-year-olds, including girls, Mr. Wafa said. CARLOTTA GALL (NYT)

SRI LANKA: BLAST KILLS 11 SAILORS In the third such attack in four days, an explosion in the east attributed to the ethnic separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam killed 11 government sailors and wounded several others when their bus hit a land mine. Two British tourists in another vehicle were also injured. On Monday, a land mine blast in the north killed five soldiers and two aid workers. The attacks followed the killing of a pro-rebel politician on Friday. A spokesman for the Tigers denied that the group had had any involvement in the attacks. SHIMALI SENANAYAKE (NYT)

CHINA: EXPLOSIVES BLAMED FOR HOSPITAL BLAST THAT KILLED 33 The police found evidence of explosives at the site of a blast at an underground hospital parking garage in northern Shanxi Province that killed at least 33 people on Monday, the government said. The hospital was for employees of the Xuangang Coal and Electricity Company in Yuanping. The blast also injured several people living close by, the official New China News Agency reported without elaborating, saying that the death toll might rise. The authorities have not provided an official cause for the blast but said they were investigating "large quantities of detonators and blasting fuses" found at the site, the news agency said. A two-story residence directly above the garage was destroyed, a hospital official said. (AP)

EUROPE

TURKEY: CHARGES AGAINST 4 JOURNALISTS DROPPED; FIFTH TO BE TRIED A court in Istanbul dropped charges against four Turkish journalists accused of insulting the country's courts but decided to press ahead with the trial of a fifth, a report said. The five, who had faced from 6 months to 10 years in prison, have been on trial since February for criticizing in print a court's decision last year to shut down a conference in Istanbul about the mass killings of Armenians by Turks during the Ottoman Empire. The court case is being monitored by the European Union as a test of Turkish human rights. The court dropped charges against Ismet Berkan and Haluk Sahin of the liberal newspaper Radikal and Hasan Cemal and Erol Katircioglu of the center-right newspaper Milliyet on the ground that prosecutors had not filed the charges within the required two-month period after the publication of the articles, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported. But the court decided to proceed with the trial of Murat Belge, a columnist for Radikal, the agency said. It was not clear why the case against him was not dropped. A case against the country's best-known novelist, Orhan Pamuk, who publicly questioned Turkey's official denial of the Armenian genocide, was dropped in January after Turkey came under harsh criticism from the European Union. (AP)

AFRICA

NIGERIA: THIRD-TERM AMENDMENT PRESENTED TO LAWMAKERS A proposed constitutional amendment that could extend President Olusegun Obasanjo's hold on power was presented to the Senate despite widespread opposition and concerns that it could set off a fresh round of political unrest across the country. It was the first formal step in an attempt by Mr. Obasanjo's supporters to overturn a constitutional two-term limit that would force him to hand over power next year to a newly elected president. Debate on the amendment is expected to begin next month. (REUTERS)

SOUTH AFRICA: CASE CLOSED. BEANS GIVE YOU GAS. The country's Advertising Standards Authority ruled that eating beans leads to intestinal gas, rejecting a claim by the Dry Bean Producers Organization that a television commercial for Wildeklawer sweet onions was unfair when it implied as much. In the ad, a rugby team refuses to enter a locker room where one of its players is eating beans, while the coach pleads with the player to switch to the onions, which have "no tears, no burn and definitely no stink." The bean producers argued that the commercial negated its efforts to promote beans as a healthy food, but the standards group said that it was "objectively determinable factual reality" that people who eat beans pass gas. MICHAEL WINES (NYT)