■ <B> KABUL. About 24 Taliban killed in Afghan clash. </B>US and Afghan troops killed about 24 Taliban in a seven-hour battle in the southern province of Helmand, the US military said yesterday. Two members of the US-led force were wounded in the Wednesday night battle, in the Sangin district of Helmand, it said.

■ <B>BEIJING. Bill Gates sees tech revolution without limits. </B>Technology will keep getting better and better rather than plateauing out, with the humble keyboard making way for speech recognition software as standard, Microsoft Corporation Chairman Bill Gates said yesterday. “I’m often asked, is the technology revolution going to reach an end? Is the improvement in the chips and the software, will that start to slow down as we reach some limits?” he told a forum in Beijing. “The answer is – certainly in the decades ahead – we don’t see any limits. We see in fact the power will just get better and better”. In the future, students’ textbooks would be replaced by individual electronic tablets that would be cheap, multimedia, and connected to the Internet, predicted Gates, the world’s richest man with an estimated $56 billion fortune.

■ <B>LONDON. Fifth teenager in court over stabbing. </B>A fifth teenager has been charged with the murder of Paul Erhahon, the 14-year-old stabbed to death near his home in east London, police said. Unemployed Theo Diah, 18, from Leytonstone, appeared at Waltham Forest magistrates court yesterday. He is also charged with the attempted murder of Erhahon’s 15-year-old friend, who was seriously hurt in the stabbing in Leytonstone on April 6. They were the latest teenage victims in a series of shootings and stabbings in London. Erhahon’s murder came less than a month after the fatal stabbings of Adam Regis, 15, in east London and Kodjo Yenga in the west of the capital.

■ <B> BERLIN. German minister sparks row over anti-terror measures.</B> Terror suspects should not be presumed innocent until proven guilty, Germany’s Interior Minister said yesterday, sparking controversy over the extent of new anti-terrorism laws in the liberal country.

The comments by Wolfgang Schaeuble have stirred a debate in Germany where the post-war constitution is seen as enshrining citizens’ liberty and protecting them from the state persecution which occured under the Nazi and Communist regimes. Recent changes to Germany’s security policies and anti-terrorism laws have already met with fierce resistance despite a near miss last year when two suitcase bombs planted by terrorists on German trains failed to detonate.

■ <B> TAIPEI. Rare tornado touches down in Taiwan, wrecks houses . </B>A rare tornado touched down in southern Taiwan, wrecking houses and uprooting utility poles, a Central Weather Bureau official said. The twister hit Tainan County at 1:30 a.m. on Wednesday as unstable weather associated with a cold front passed through the area, said Daniel Wu, director of the bureau’s forecasting centre. No one was injured from the tornado, which lasted about an hour later, he added. Taiwan media said about 20 houses were damaged, utilities were cut and pigs died after the were plucked from the ground and thrown through the air. One newspaper showed a picture of a pig slumped over the top of a fence.

■ <B>LONDON. Sex theme park to open soon. </B>A £7m sex theme park, which has no rides, is to open in London’s West End later this year. Visitors to Amora - The Academy of Sex and Relationships at the Trocadero in Piccadilly, will pass through seven zones including Pleasure and Orgasm. The 10,500sq-ft exhibit is designed to “separate fact from myth and educate everyone into being better lovers”. You have to be aged 18 and over to get in and tickets will cost £15 for the attraction which opens on 7 September. Organisers expect to attract more than 600,000 visitors within the first year. The theme park will include life-sized silicone-made models which visitors can touch to discover erogenous zones. People will also be able to build their ideal partner from a series of body parts and there will be instructions on how best to kiss and how to talk more sexily.