Kazakhstan

Space station capsule lands

A Soyuz capsule carrying a U.S.-Russian crew back to Earth following six months at the international space station landed safely and on target in Kazakhstan early Sunday.

The bell-shaped Soyuz TMA-4, carrying Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Yuri Shargin and American partner Mike Fincke, touched down beneath a parachute at the targeted landing site, some 55 miles north of the town of Arkalyk, in pre-dawn darkness.

Russia’s non-reusable Soyuz has become the linchpin of the global community’s manned space program, filling in for the U.S. shuttle fleet, grounded since Columbia burned up on re-entry in February 2003.

Serbia-Montenegro

Serbs boycott elections

Kosovo’s beleaguered Serb minority largely boycotted general elections Saturday, dealing a blow to international efforts to create multiethnic harmony in the province.

The Albanian majority, however, eagerly cast ballots it hoped would bring the former Yugoslav territory closer to independence, but the lopsided turnout could further delay talks on Kosovo’s future.

Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians want independence, while Kosovo Serbs and Belgrade want the province to remain part of Serbia-Montenegro, the successor to Yugoslavia.

The election is Kosovo’s second since it came under U.N. and NATO rule in 1999, when a NATO air war ended former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s crackdown on independence-minded ethnic Albanians. The 1998-99 war killed an estimated 10,000 people, mainly ethnic Albanians. No major election-related violence was reported Saturday.

Afghanistan

Bomber kills American, girl

A purported Taliban militant set off grenades strapped to his body on a bustling Kabul street Saturday, killing an American woman and an Afghan girl. Several others were wounded, including three NATO soldiers.

The bombing broke a lull in violence in Kabul following a security clampdown for landmark presidential elections that U.S.-backed interim leader Hamid Karzai appeared set to win.

A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the assault, which left the bomber’s mutilated body slumped between the soldiers’ car and the front of a carpet store.

The 11-year-old Afghan girl died late Saturday in a Kabul hospital, said a NATO spokesman. Also killed in the blast was Jamie Michalsky, 23, a translator from Cokato, Minn.