THE PHILIPINES: A US army CH-47 helicopter with 12 American troops on board crashed into the sea in the Philippines yesterday and no survivors were found, the Pentagon said.
The big helicopter went down in darkness while flying from Basilan to Mactan Air Base US Navy Lieut Cmdr Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said. "No survivors have been found. There were no reports of hostile fire," he said.
The incident occurred as a growing number of American forces were arriving in the Philippines to take part in training exercises in which Manila's military is conducting a stepped-up battle against Muslim rebels in the south.
Gunmen in Kabul opened fire on a patrol of British paratroopers, officials said yesterday, as concern mounted about worsening security in the Afghan capital and throughout the country.
The troops returned fire, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force said. No one was injured.
The incident occurred as the CIA said in a classified report that the "seeds of civil conflict" remained in Afghanistan. The report, leaked to the New York Times, warned of chaos and violence if rival warlords fought for power in ethnic conflicts.
Deaths in pregnancy and childbirth among Afghan refugees are among the highest recorded by medical science, US researchers report today. Lack of healthcare services meant four out of every 10 Afghan women living in 12 settlements in Pakistan died of maternal causes - more than cancer and tuberculosis combined.
"The proportional mortality of 41 per cent for maternal causes among deaths in Afghan refugee women of reproductive age is one of the highest reported in scientific literature," said Ms Linda Bartlett of the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.
The survey of 134,406 refugees, reported in the Lancet today, was conducted in 1999 and 2000. Many of the deaths could have been prevented with better access to health facilities.
• Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter kidnapped in Pakistan, is dead, the paper reported yesterday, citing US and Pakistani officials.
"We now believe, based on reports from the US State Department and police officials of the Pakistani province of Sind, that Danny Pearl was killed by his captors," the Journal publisher Mr Peter Kann said in a statement.