Afghan blast targets official but kills bystander

A car carrying explosives blew up today near the convoy of a senior politician in the Afghan capital, killing two suspected suicide attackers and a bystander and injuring four other people, police said.

Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, the head of a commission leading efforts for reconciliation between the Afghan government and Taliban militants, was driving to work when the explosion occurred. Mujaddedi and others in his convoy were not hurt, police official Zalmay Huryakhil said.

Ban on kite-flying fails to take hold

Hundreds of kites filled the skies of Pakistan's cultural capital Saturday, the opening day of a traditional spring festival, despite a ban that followed the deaths of seven people killed by glass-coated or wire kite strings.

The two-day festival of Basant has been celebrated in the eastern city of Lahore for centuries, culminating with thousands of kites soaring into the night and boisterous rooftop parties. Basant means "yellow" in the Hindi language, a reference to the fields of blooming yellow flowers that grace the area as spring approaches.

On Saturday, police swiftly raided homes where kites were seen flying from backyards in scattered parts of the city. Some people cut the strings as police approached and denied they had defied the ban.

Country hangs 2 linked to al-Qaida

Two men convicted of killing a U.S. aid official were hanged before dawn Saturday in Jordan's first execution of al-Qaida-linked militants.

Libyan Salem bin Suweid and Jordanian Yasser Freihat were executed for the 2002 killing of Laurence Foley, a 60-year-old administrator with the U.S. Agency for International Development who was gunned down outside his Amman home. The plot was blamed on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, chief of al-Qaida in Iraq.

Bin Suweid was charged with shooting Foley, and Freihat was found guilty of driving the getaway car.

Jordan, a U.S. ally and the target of al-Qaida plots including hotel bombings that killed 60 people last year, has sentenced scores of militants to death in recent years, but executions have so far been carried out only against Islamists not linked to al-Qaida or other known terrorist groups.

About 2,000 people protested the hangings in the village of Al Yamoun in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Freihat's family is from.

Religious figure, 15, is missing in jungles

A 15-year-old boy whose followers believe he is the reincarnation of Buddha has disappeared after 10 months of meditation in the Nepalese jungle, officials said Saturday.

Followers of Ram Bahadur Banjan reported his disappearance and search parties today split up in the jungles of Bara, about 100 miles south of the capital, Kathmandu, to investigate, said Santaraj Subedi, the chief government official in the district.

Gautam Raj Kattel, a police official, said officials did not believe Banjan had been abducted by communist rebels or robbers.

Banjan has been sitting cross-legged and motionless with eyes closed in a niche among the roots of a tree in the jungle since May 17, 2005, according to his associates, who claim he has had no food or water during that period.

Also

Eight inmates died after a fight broke out Saturday among a gang at a prison in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexican radio said. Ten people, including a guard, were injured before local and state police helped restore order.

Compiled from The Associated

Press and Reuters