World Briefing

A spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai declined to comment.

With U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces suffering their deadliest year so far in Afghanistan, the top United Nations envoy, Kai Eide, said the war "has to be won through political means."

He spoke a day after Britain's military commander in Afghanistan said the war couldn't be won. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said that belief was "defeatist."

PAKISTAN

50,000 Afghans ordered deported

Pakistan ordered the deportation of about 50,000 Afghan refugees in an insurgency-racked tribal region amid a major military offensive against Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

The government said it was expelling all Afghan refugees in Bajaur, alleging that many have links to militant groups. Police in Bajaur arrested 25 Afghans and said they would soon be deported.

"The orders have been issued to the tribal police to push all of them [refugees] out," said local government official Abdul Haseeb, adding that their homes would be bulldozed.

INDIA

Ethnic clashes leave 49 dead

Clashes between ethnic groups in India's remote northeast have left at least 49 people dead in four days, officials said.

The fighting in Assam state began Friday. Ethnic Bodos and Muslim settlers in Assam have a history of conflict and have fought recently with bows and arrows, spears and machetes, and have burned each other's homes and property, officials said over the weekend.

More than 150 people have been injured and more than 100,000 have fled their homes, said Assam Home Commissioner Subhash Das.

SOMALIA

Mortar attack kills 17 at market

Mortar rounds slammed into a market in Somalia's capital, killing at least 17 people, after a failed insurgent attack on the presidential palace.

Shabab, a radical Islamic group at the heart of the Somali insurgency, claimed responsibility for the initial attack in Mogadishu.

Mortar shells then slammed into the Bakara market, where people can buy items as varied as packets of rice and sugar and grenades and AK-47s. The government suspects insurgents use the market as a base, and it often comes under fire.

AND FINALLY . . .

Airlift of the penguins

More than 370 penguins that mysteriously washed up on Brazil's equatorial beaches were flown south on a huge air force cargo plane and released closer to the frigid waters they call home, advocates said.

Onlookers cheered as the young Magellanic penguins were set free on a beach in southern Brazil and scampered into the ocean, the International Fund for Animal Welfare said in a statement. It called the penguin release the largest in South America.

The penguins were among nearly 1,000 that have washed up on Brazil's northeastern coast in recent months, said group spokesman Chris Cutter. About 20% died and the rest were not healthy enough to send back.

From Times Wire Reports