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Car wrecks leading cause of youth deaths

By TIMES WIRES
Published April 20, 2007

GENEVA - Car crashes are the leading cause of death worldwide for people between 10 and 24, the U.N. health agency said Thursday, adding that most such fatalities occur in developing countries with poor road safety conditions. Nearly 400,000 people under 25 are killed in traffic accidents every year and millions more are injured or disabled, the World Health Organization said. The agency's 40-page "youth and road safety" report was issued as part of a new initiative by the United Nations to improve global road safety. "Road traffic crashes are not 'accidents,' " said WHO's director-general, Dr. Margaret Chan.

U.S., Afghan forces kill 27 Taliban

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces clashed with Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan, killing 24 suspected militants, while three more died in an ambush in the west, the coalition said Thursday. Pakistani troops, meanwhile, fired at Afghan soldiers as the Afghans pulled up a disputed fence supposed to prevent Taliban militants from crossing their common border, the Afghan Defense Ministry said; there were no reports of casualties. A NATO soldier also shot at a vehicle in eastern Khost province on Thursday, killing a 12-year-old girl and wounding a 2-year-old, said provincial police chief Mohammed Ayub.

Activists decry vigilante campaign

LAHORE, PAKISTAN - Chanting "down with Talibanization," hundreds of human rights activists marched through Pakistani cities Thursday, urging the government to rein in clerics who have launched an anti-vice campaign in the capital. About 500 activists gathered for a rally in the eastern city of Lahore to condemn the vigilante campaign. "We reject Talibanization, we reject Mullah-ism," Asma Jehangir, a prominent Pakistani rights activist, told the rally. Similar rallies drew about 150 activists in Islamabad and Karachi and 70 in the northwestern city of Peshawar.

Elsewhere

The Hague, Netherlands: An international agreement to unseal a long-closed archive of Nazi concentration camp documents for scholarship has won crucial endorsement from Germany, officials said Thursday, giving the accord a majority among the 11-nations overseeing the treasure of historical documents.

Beijing: A Chinese court on Thursday sentenced Canadian activist Huseyin Celil to life in prison for alleged terrorist links, delivering a ruling that could ratchet up political tensions between China and Canada. The official Xinhua News Agency described Celil as a "prominent member of the 'East Turkistan' terrorist organization."

Dakar, Senegal: Congo's new government has failed to stop the use of child soldiers - merging forces of former warlords into the regular army without weeding out hundreds of underage fighters, New York-based Human Rights Watch said Thursday. It said 300 to 500 children, some as young as 13, are serving in newly combined army brigades.

Mogadishu, Somalia: Fighting between Ethiopian troops and insurgents left at least 12 people dead in Somalia's capital Thursday, while a suicide car bomb exploded at an Ethiopian army base, officials and witnesses said. Deputy Defense Minister Salad Ali Jelle blamed the bombing on al-Qaida elements and said only the bomber died.

[Last modified April 20, 2007, 01:13:35]