World briefs 15A

Forest fires, continuing heat exact toll on Europe

ROME -- With a heat wave scorching Europe, emergency crews battled wildfires as authorities made house calls for those suffering at home, and tourists hunted for drinks and shade.

Around Europe, about 40 deaths have been blamed on the sizzling temperatures, which have been stuck around 100 degrees Fahrenheit or higher for days.

Wildfires fanned by hot winds have eaten up territory in Italy, France, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, and the Netherlands.

In the Paris region, firefighters are making about 600 calls a day for people suffering because of the heat, while Italians fled the stifling cities for the mountains and beaches Saturday, causing miles of traffic jams.

No quick relief was coming: Germany is expected to swelter until midweek; France is counting on at least another week of abnormally high temperatures; and weather experts in Italy expect the country to be roasting until September.

Chinese envoy: Nuclear talks held this month

BEIJING -- Multilateral talks on North Korea's nuclear program will take place in Beijing later this month, a Chinese envoy said Saturday after returning from the North Korean capital.

North Korea agreed last week to the talks with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea. The talks are aimed at resolving tensions over U.S. complaints that Pyongyang is trying to develop nuclear weapons in violation of a 1994 agreement.

"It will take place some time in the second half of August, but the participant parties are still discussing the exact dates," Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters at the Beijing airport.

China is the isolated North's only major ally and its leading source of food and fuel aid.

Iran journalists sit in to protest media crackdown

TEHRAN, Iran -- More than 200 pro-reform journalists held a vigil in Iran, saying they were protesting a continuing media crackdown and a lack press freedoms.

"Today, we have gathered here to tell the people of the world that freedom of the pen in Iran is restricted. Today, the biggest problem of journalists in Iran is absence of justice and freedom," Mohsen Kadivar, a leading reformist cleric and writer, told the audience.

Mass closures of newspapers began in April 2000. Hard-liners have closed down more than 90 pro-democracy publications and jailed several dozen writers and political activists since then, almost all of them without trial or in closed trials without a jury.-- From wire reports

Report: Poison gas leak in China's northeast sickens 36

BEIJING -- Toxic gas that leaked from canisters left behind from World War II sickened 36 people in northeast China, the official Xinhua News Agency said Saturday.

Xinhua said unspecified experts had concluded that the canisters were chemical weapons left by the Japanese army. Japan is believed to have abandoned about 700,000 chemical weapons loaded with mustard gas and other poisons in China's northeast after its 13-year occupation of the region ended in 1945.

Twenty-nine people were hospitalized after the cans were unearthed Monday in the city of Qiqihar, Xinhua said. The area is about 650 miles northeast of Beijing.

Xinhua said fumes from an oily substance in the canisters caused headaches, burning eyes and other symptoms.

Lawyers for Chinese plaintiffs who have sued the Japanese government say the weapons have caused some 2,000 deaths since the war.

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