Afghanistan
ASADABAD — A rocket exploded in a school yard in eastern Afghanistan Tuesday, killing seven students and wounding 34 other people in an attack possibly aimed at a nearby U.S. military base, officials said. The tragedy was the deadliest in a string of assaults on Afghanistan's education system since the hard-line Islamic Taliban regime was ousted by a U.S.-led coalition after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Canada
IONA, Ontario — The Bandido biker accused of killing eight fellow motorcycle enthusiasts once belonged to another gang called the Loners — a fitting description of his personality, according to residents. The mostly farming families in Iona and other nearby townships — each with a few hundred residents — were still stunned Tuesday by the kind of violence usually reserved for big cities. Although they accepted that their neighbor, Wayne Kellestine, was a member of the outlawed Bandidos gang, they found it hard to believe he killed the men who were found slain in a field not far from his home Saturday.
China
BEIJING — Police found evidence of explosives at the site of a parking garage blast in northern China that killed at least 33 people, the government said Tuesday. The explosion tore through an underground parking lot Monday at a hospital for employees of the Xuangang Coal and Electricity Co. Ltd. in Yuanping city, Shanxi province.
France
PARIS — Students and unions staged new protests Tuesday across France, hoping to ride the momentum that led President Jacques Chirac to scrap a youth labor law and force the government to pull other contested reforms. Chirac's retreat and school vacations that began this week were expected to deplete turnout from massive recent protests and university sit-ins that prompted him to abandon the "youth jobs contract" on Monday.
Iraq
BAGHDAD — Five American soldiers have been killed in Iraq, including three killed Tuesday north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said. A U.S. statement said the three members of Multinational Division Baghdad died Tuesday afternoon in a roadside bombing, but it did not give a precise location.
North Korea
The top U.S. negotiator on ending North Korea's nuclear program on Tuesday renewed his call for the country to rejoin six-party talks, but said after meeting officials from other key nations that he didn't expect it to happen soon. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill held a round of meetings with counterparts from Japan, South Korea and China on Tuesday on the sidelines of a security conference in Tokyo.
Spain
MADRID — A Spanish judge issued the first indictments in the 2004 Madrid train bombings, charging 29 people Tuesday with murder, terrorism or other crimes after a probe that uncovered a hornet's nest of Islamic militancy but no apparent link to al-Qaida. In a minutely detailed indictment spanning 1,471 pages, Juan del Olmo, the investigative magistrate spearheading the probe, described the birth and workings of a cell of longtime residents, most of them from Morocco and Syria.
Syria
DAMASCUS — A U.N.-funded report on violence against Syrian women that appeared in state-run media broke a long-held taboo against public discourse on such issues, activists said Tuesday. The activists said they hope the government's willingness to publicize the matter will help raise awareness in this conservative society. The study found that about 22 percent of married women in Syria said they had been verbally or physically assaulted, with about 10 percent saying they had been beaten.
Venezuela
CARACAS — Venezuela unveiled a monument Tuesday to people killed in clashes leading up to a 2002 coup against President Hugo Chavez — a short-lived revolt that he insists had U.S. backing and that underlies his increasingly hostile relations with Washington. The U.S. government's swift recognition of interim leaders who briefly forced out Chavez on April 12, 2002, has left deep suspicions in Venezuela ever since street protests swept the president back to power.