Seven aboard missing Red Cross helicopter

A Red Cross helicopter that had been used for earthquake relief in Pakistan since October was missing Sunday with a crew of seven aboard, the aid agency said.

The Mi-8 helicopter, operated by Turkmenistan Airlines, lost contact with Pakistani air control just before entering Afghanistan on Saturday, the International Red Cross said.

The crew members are employees of Turkmenistan Airlines, and there were no Red Cross staff on board.

Candidate, 25 people killed

Clashes between Maoist rebels who attacked government forces in a southern Nepal village left 25 people dead and suspected rebels killed a pro-government candidate in next month's municipal elections, officials said Sunday.

The gunbattle began Saturday night when insurgents attacked a security patrol in Phapar Badi village, 100 miles south of the capital. The fighting lasted until daybreak Sunday. At least 17 rebels, five soldiers, two civilians and a police officer were killed and helicopters were searching for the attackers, Defense Ministry spokesman Bhupendra Poudel said.

Bijaya Lal Das, a local leader of the small Nepal Sadbhawana Party that supports King Gyanendra, was shot near his office in Janakpur, about 190 miles southeast of Katmandu. Das was a candidate for mayor of Janakpur in municipal elections scheduled for Feb. 8.

Violence forces 20,000 to flee Congo

About 20,000 people have fled violence in Congo to seek refuge across the border in Uganda over the last four days, the U.N. refugee agency said Sunday.

In eastern Congo, home to many of the refugees, renegade former army soldiers ambushed U.N. peacekeepers with mortars in a hilltop banana plantation Sunday, sparking a firefight that left four attackers dead, U.N. officials said.

The peacekeepers were trying to flush the former soldiers out of territory they captured during raids last week, U.N. military spokesman Mayank Awasthi said. The raids in North Kivu province forced the refugees to cross into Uganda.

150 media deaths in 2005 set record

Relentless targeting of the press in Iraq and the loss of dozens of journalists in an Iranian plane crash pushed the number of media professionals killed around the world to a record 150 in 2005, an international media-rights group said today.

Attacks, often by criminals, extremists or paramilitary groups, accounted for more than half the deaths in what the International Federation of Journalists' secretary general, Aidan White, called "a year of unspeakable violence against media."

The Brussels-based organization's report said 2005 saw a rising trend of "targeted assassination of editorial staff" with 89 "killed in the line of duty, singled out for their professional work."

Other journalists died in accidents or natural disasters at work, including the 48 Iranians killed in the Dec. 6 plane crash in Tehran.

Also

The Turkish government has declined to approve charges against the country's most prominent author, leaving the decision to a local court that could drop the case, a government official said Sunday. A judge last month halted Orhan Pamuk's trial on charges of insulting Turkey and Turkishness and insisted the Justice Ministry first approve the case, which has outraged the European Union.

Compiled from The Associated Press