<B>AFGHANISTAN. Two foreign soldiers, 14 Taliban killed. </B>Two foreign soldiers and 14 rebels have been killed in the latest clashes in the most serious spell of violence in Afghanistan since the Taliban were overthrown in 2001, military officials said yesterday.

The latest bloodshed came as the US-led coalition announced a major offensive against the Taliban in their southern heartland ahead of handing over the region to NATO troops to allow a reduction in US forces in the country.

<B>INDONESIA. Volcano back on highest alert level.</B>An Indonesian agency has raised the alert status of Mount Merapi volcano to its highest level again after it spewed more hot clouds, an official said yesterday, a day after it downgraded the status. “The status was upgraded at 2 p.m. because of the increasing hot clouds,” Triyani, an official at the state-run volcano monitoring centre, told Reuters.

Merapi in central Java, near the ancient royal city of Yogyakarta, had been on the highest alert level since mid-May until Tuesday when the centre said decreasing volcanic activity had made it less dangerous.

<B>BANGLADESH. Elephants drive hundreds of Bangladeshis onto boats.</B>Hundreds of villagers have taken refuge on boats in Bangladesh after their homes were destroyed by a herd of rampaging elephants, local officials said yesterday.

The elephants repeatedly raided their village at Barkal on the fringe of a forest in southeastern Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts, pulling down houses and plundering crops. Attempts to scare the beasts away by setting fires, blowing trumpets and setting off crackers failed.

<B>BRUSSELS. Arcelor says met with Mittal, more talks to come. </B>Arcelor and Mittal, the world’s two largest steel companies, have begun talks about a possible takeover, Arcelor said, more than four months after it rejected Mittal’s overtures.

One Arcelor source told Reuters that the meetings might produce an increased offer from Mittal. Mittal rejected this, saying it might make further improvements to the corporate governance component of the bid, but not the price.

It had already raised its bid once, and it is currently worth 21.3 billion euros ($26.8 billion). Arcelor launched a string of manoeuvres to escape Mittal’s bid, the most recent of which was finding a “white knight” in the form of Russian peer Severstal.

<B>BUDAPEST. Hungary poultry bird flu outbreak was H5N1. </B>The outbreak of avian influenza among Hungarian geese last week was certainly the deadly H5N1 type, the farm minister was quoted as saying, but he added that the UK lab testing the samples had not confirmed it as yet.

Hungarian officials said last week they suspected the H5N1 strain had infected the geese in the southeast of Hungary because that type had infected wild birds in Hungary and poultry elsewhere in the region, with Romania worst hit.

<B>HAVANA. Cuba cuts off power to US mission. </B>The Cuban government cut off electricity to the US diplomatic mission in Havana a week ago, and US requests for power to be restored have gone unanswered, the State Department said. The facility has been operating with generator power.

Work at the mission continues, including interviews of refugees and outreach programs for the Cuban people, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. He said Cuban authorities also reduce the availability of water to the mission from time to time. McCormack said he suspects that the decision to cut the power was in response to efforts by the mission to provide information to the Cuban people. In January, President Fidel Castro complained about use of the US mission to carry human rights messages to passersby on outdoor electronic signs.