World in brief

Taliban aide is arrested in bomb attack

KABUL, Afghanistan - Security forces arrested a deputy of a top Taliban commander Thursday in connection with a bomb attack that wounded three U.S. soldiers, and an American soldier died when an Air Force helicopter crashed on a nighttime mission to rescue an election worker.

Interim leader Hamid Karzai, meanwhile, nudged closer to victory in Afghanistan's landmark presidential poll with nearly two-thirds of the vote counted - although his huge lead narrowed slightly as the third- and fourth-place candidates gained some ground.

A homemade bomb destroyed two American Humvees in southeastern Paktika province near the Pakistan border, wounding three U.S. soldiers, one critically, and their Afghan interpreter, a U.S. military statement said.

Paktika Gov. Gulab Mungal said Afghan forces later arrested a suspect in the attack, whom he identified only as a deputy of Jalaluddin Haqqani, a front-line Taliban commander who served briefly as tribal affairs minister before the fall of the hard-line Islamic regime in late 2001. He remains at large.

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica - Former President Rafael Angel Calderon was detained Thursday in connection with a corruption investigation, local media reported.

He is the second former leader to be detained in less than a week. On Saturday, a judge ordered six months of house arrest for Miguel Angel Rodriguez, president from 1998 until 2002, while prosecutors prepare a case against him for illegally sharing commissions on government contracts.

Calderon, president from 1990 to 1994, has been caught up in questions involving an almost $40-million Finnish government loan meant to help Costa Rica's social security system purchase medical equipment.

CHINA MINE BLAST: Rescue workers in central China searched Thursday for 88 coal miners who were missing after a gas explosion ripped through a shaft, killing at least 60 - most by suffocating toxic fumes - in the country's deadliest mine disaster this year. The blast occurred Wednesday night in the Daping Mine in Henan province, said Sun Huashan, deputy administrator of the State Administration of Work Safety.

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