Paris

Health minister predicts heat toll may hit 12,000

France’s health minister said in an interview to be published today that people had not stopped dying from the August heat wave that seared France, and he predicted the death toll would climb toward 12,000.

But Jean-Francois Mattei resisted calls for his resignation because of what critics say was a slow response to the crisis by the center-right government.

“I have nothing to hide,” Mattei said in an interview with Le Journal du Dimanche made available Saturday evening. But Mattei refused to respond to direct criticism while investigations are in progress.

Friday, Mattei announced a provisional death toll of 11,435.

Afghanistan

Soldiers take strategic peaks in fierce fighting, bombing

The U.S. military said Saturday that a weeklong campaign of bombing and intense ground battles on the craggy mountain ridges of southern Afghanistan has killed dozens of Taliban holdouts.

U.S. special operations forces and hundreds of allied Afghan soldiers were pressing their assault, taking several strategic peaks and laying siege to positions of the hardline Islamic militant group. Two U.S. soldiers were wounded in the fighting.

A provincial intelligence chief said that for the first time in the recent assault, American warplanes operated during daylight hours on Saturday, in support of a joint U.S.-Afghan operation that has met stiff resistance.

Last week’s fighting follows a recent surge in military action by the Taliban, which has staged deadly attacks on Afghan forces.

Brazil

About 1,000 slave workers freed from farms, report says

Federal police and government inspectors in the past two weeks freed about 1,000 slave workers from two farms in northeastern Brazil, media reports said Saturday.

Authorities on Aug. 19 freed about 800 men and women working in conditions of slavery on a coffee farm close to the town of Barreiras, about 1,100 miles north of Rio de Janeiro, the newspaper Correio Brasiliense said.

The newspaper cited Marcelo Campos, a spokesman for the labor inspection unit at the Labor Ministry, as its source.

Also, 200 more slave workers were found this week in a nearby farm, the report said.

Calls made to the Labor Ministry were not immediately returned.

Washington, D.C.

Judge grants Moussaoui access to al-Qaida operatives

A federal judge is granting terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui access to two al-Qaida captives whose testimony might be helpful to the defense, according to news reports.

In a ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema approved Moussaoui’s request for testimony from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, allegedly the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, who allegedly funneled money to the Sept. 11 hijackers, according to the reports.

Moussaoui says the witnesses he seeks access to would testify that he had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.