Toronto

Theater wall collapse kills one, injures 14

A wall of a downtown theater that was being demolished collapsed Monday onto a school, killing one man and injuring 14 people.

Workers were tearing down the historic Uptown Theater when it crumbled about 10:30 a.m. One wall fell on the roof of the Yorkville English Academy, a school that teaches English as a second language to adults and youths.

“It just collapsed. The wall beside us fell in on top of our building,” said teacher John Harrington, was leading a class of about a dozen students at the time.

A man died at the scene and 14 other people were taken to hospitals, including two children with crushed legs, said Bruce Farr, director of Toronto Emergency Medical Services. Most of the injuries were not life-threatening, he said.

Authorities called off the rescue effort at 6 p.m., saying they did not expect to find anyone in the rubble.

Iraq

U.S. military reports more casualties

Insurgents shot and killed a U.S. soldier guarding a gas station Monday in northern Iraq, and an Iraqi policeman died trying to defuse a bomb, the U.S. military said.

The attack on the soldier from the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division took place in Mosul, 250 miles north of Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said in Baghdad.

“Four Iraqi males traveling in vehicles … opened fire on coalition soldiers guarding the station,” Kimmitt said. “One coalition soldier died of gunshot wounds in that attack.”

Hours after the killing, three U.S. soldiers in Mosul were wounded when a bomb exploded as their patrol passed, a U.S. military spokesperson said.

Three other U.S. soldiers were killed and one injured Monday when two Stryker infantry carrier vehicles they were riding in rolled into a canal near Duluiyah, 30 miles north of Baghdad. Hostile fire was not involved.

Greece

Convictions take toll on terror group

A special tribunal on Monday convicted the mastermind, chief gunman and 13 other members of the November 17 cell for killings and attacks spanning a generation, capping the prosecution of a terrorist group that for decades taunted authorities.

The rulings — following a nine-month trial in a bunker-like prison courtroom in Athens — were touted by the government as evidence of Greece’s commitment to fighting terrorism ahead of the Aug. 13-29 Olympics.

They also mark the end of one of the last major prosecutions against European militants inspired by 1970s visions of Marxism.

United Nations

Court ruling sought for West Bank barrier

The U.N. General Assembly approved a Palestinian-backed resolution Monday calling on the International Court of Justice to issue a legal opinion on the security barrier that Israel is building in the Palestinian territories.

The action marked the first time the United Nations has sought a judicial opinion from the court on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The resolution was approved 90 to 8, with 74 abstentions. The United States, Israel, Australia, Ethiopia and four tiny Pacific island states voted against the resolution.

The move comes weeks after the General Assembly demanded that Israel halt construction of the fence, and after U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan released a report charging that the Israeli project was illegal.

South Korea

Report: Nuclear powers exaggerated for N. Korea

The Bush administration has asserted in recent months that North Korea possesses one or two nuclear bombs and is rapidly developing the means to make more.

But the administration’s assessment rests on meager fresh evidence and limited, sometimes dated, intelligence, according to interviews with more than 30 current and former intelligence officials and diplomats in Asia, Europe and the United States:

• The United States has failed to find the North Korean plant that the Bush administration says will start producing highly enriched uranium.
• North Korea’s attempts to reprocess plutonium recently hit a roadblock, raising new questions about its technical capabilities.
• China rushed 40,000 troops to its border with North Korea last summer after the United States warned that the regime of Kim Jong Il might try to smuggle plutonium out of the country. No smuggling has been discovered.

Moscow

Election results push out democratic officials

President Vladimir Putin on Monday defended elections that gave his allies a sweeping victory and pushed liberal parties out of parliament for the first time since the Soviet collapse.

The main pro-Kremlin party, United Russia, won nearly three times as many votes in Sunday’s elections as its closest rival, according to preliminary results.

Its new power, together with the defeat of liberal parties and a surge by nationalists who have called for strong state control of the economy, raised questions about Putin’s plans for what seems certain to be a second term following March presidential elections.

Putin described the voting as “free, honest and open,” despite criticism from the United States and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

A report by OSCE observers said campaign coverage by the state media was slanted toward pro-Putin forces.