Afghanistan: Terrorist threat closes country’s only bar

Barely a month after opening its doors, Afghanistan’s only bar has shut down after warnings it could have been the target of a terrorist attack.

The Irish Club opened in the capital, Kabul, on St. Patrick’s Day, and quickly became a popular hangout for foreigners in this conservative Islamic city, where alcohol consumption is widely frowned upon — and banned among the Afghan population.

The bar closed Thursday.

“We had a security warning for all places where foreigners gather, so we closed temporarily,” David Porter, a British partner in the club, said Saturday.

Porter said he hoped the establishment would reopen next week.

Argentina: Close vote expected in presidential race

Former President Carlos Menem, bidding for a third term in office, faces two other leading presidential candidates today in an election so tight that opinion polls suggest a runoff will be necessary.

The vote is shaping up as one of the closest in Argentina’s history, highlighting deep divisions over who should lead Latin America’s third-largest economy out of the doldrums.

To avoid a runoff, a candidate must pick up 45 percent of the vote or finish at least 10 percentage points ahead of the second-place finisher.

Polls shows Menem’s closest rivals are Nestor Kirchner, a provincial governor backed by Duhalde, and Ricardo Lopez Murphy, a former economy minister

Tokyo: Giant panda goes home without breeding

Ling Ling the giant panda came home Saturday to Tokyo after a failed third attempt to mate with females of the endangered species in Mexico.

The 17-year-old spent three months with three female pandas at the Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico City but didn’t impregnate any of them, Kyodo news agency said, citing officials at Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo.

It was the third time Ling Ling had failed to breed with females at the Mexican zoo. He is approaching the age at which pandas no longer can father cubs.

There is still some hope: Two of the females were artificially inseminated with Ling Ling’s sperm, Kyodo said. It will be July before zookeepers can determine whether those pandas are pregnant.

Chicago: Report: Schools not told of ammonia in food

State documents show Illinois education officials failed to notify schools that some food shipped to them had been contaminated with ammonia, even though some cafeteria managers had complained for a year, the Chicago Tribune reported.

The food was contaminated when a ruptured pipe leaked 90 pounds of ammonia refrigerant in 2001 at Gateway Cold Storage in St. Louis.

Education officials have said they assumed a plan to treat the food had worked, but documents showed the state Board of Education knew in early 2002 that ammonia-laden food was still showing up in schools.

Nearly a year later, 42 children at Laraway Elementary School in Joliet were rushed to a hospital after eating chicken from the warehouse that contained up to 133 times the accepted level of ammonia.