More world news in brief.
Suicide bomb in Iraq kills at least nine
MOSUL -A suicide bomber killed at least five policemen and four civilians in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul yesterday, police said.
They said the bomber blew himself up while driving a car towards the provincial police headquarters in the centre of the city, 390km (240 miles) north of Baghdad.
Two children were among the dead. At least 46 people were wounded, including eight policemen. - (Reuters)
7 children die in French accident
PARIS -Seven children were killed when a train collided with a school bus at a level crossing in eastern France yesterday.
Three people were seriously hurt and 24 suffered less serious injuries, police said. Fifty pupils from a school in the small town of Margencel, five parents and the driver were on board the bus, which was taking the children on a school trip to a local historical site. The children were believed to be 12 or 13 years old.
The accident occurred just before 2.00pm local time when a regional train struck the bus at a level crossing at Mesinges, in the mountainous Haute Savoie area near the border with Switzerland. - (Reuters)
Polygamist sect families reunited
SAN ANTONIO -A Texas judge yesterday allowed more than 400 children removed from the polygamist Yearning for Zion ranch in west Texas to return to their parents.
State district judge Barbara Walther ordered parents to be ready for unannounced home visits by authorities and barred them from taking the children out of Texas without court approval. Parents also agreed to take parenting classes. - (Reuters)
Girl (15) stabbed to death in UK
LONDON -Police arrested a man in his 30s in south London yesterday after a girl (15) was found stabbed in a lift, the 16th teenager to die a violent death in the British capital this year.
Officers found the girl suffering from stab wounds in the lift of a block of flats near Waterloo station in Southwark, the Metropolitan Police Service said.
Police said they had arrested a man in his 30s in the Lambeth area. - (Reuters)
Appeal sought on annulment ruling
PARIS -France's justice minister Rachida Dati formally asked the public prosecutor's office yesterday to appeal a court ruling which annulled the union of two Muslims because the wife had lied about being a virgin.
Heated debate over French marriage laws erupted after the national press reported last week on the verdict, which was handed down by a court in the northern city of Lille in April.
Politicians, feminists and human rights activists have denounced the court's ruling as an affront to the legal equality of men and women and a violation of a woman's privacy. - (Reuters)