WORLD IN BRIEF

Finland

Panic swept a school in Kirkkonummi, southern Finland, on Fridayafter an online threat that it would be the next target for ashooting rampage, the school's principal said.

Two days earlier, 18-year-old Pekka-Eric Auvinen shot dead sixfellow students and two staff members at a school in nearby Tuusula,in a massacre foreshadowed by the gunman in online postings in thedays and hours before the shooting.

The Finnish government said it would toughen regulations on gunownership for those younger than 18.

"Yesterday there was a threat on the Internet. . . . Someoneposted a note with the username 'Sturmgeist,' saying that the nexttarget would be a Kirkkonummi middle school," Maarit Rossi,principal of a middle school in the town, said Friday.

Auvinen, who shot himself in the head after the rampage and diedlater of his injuries, used "Sturmgeist89" as his username on hispostings.

britain

A powerful storm unleashed tidal surges and ferocious winds thatprompted hundreds of people to evacuate in Britain but leftcountries along the North Sea coast largely unscathed.

Early Friday, waves up to 20 feet high rolled up against seadefenses in Lowestoft, the most easterly point in Britain, about 120miles northeast of London. But the peak of the predicted surgepassed without causing any major damage.

By midmorning, police were allowing people to return to homes inBritain's low-lying areas. Officials closed the Thames Riverbarrier, downstream from London, as a precaution.

In France, wind gusts of up to 66 mph whipped northern townsduring overnight storms, blowing off rooftops and uprooting trees,according to regional emergency services. In Germany, the port ofHamburg was closed, and its main fish market and riverfrontthoroughfare were under water. In the Netherlands, Rotterdam's porthalted all ship traffic until Friday evening.

afghanistan

Dozens of schoolchildren and five teachers were among thosekilled in a suicide attack in northern Afghanistan earlier thisweek, the country's deadliest since the fall of the Taliban, thegovernment said Friday.

The 59 schoolchildren had lined up to greet a group of lawmakersvisiting a sugar factory in the northern province of Baghlan onTuesday when a suicide bomber detonated explosives.

"The education minister has ordered that no children should everagain be used in these sort of events," said Zahoor Afghan, anEducation Ministry spokesman. He said the children ranged in agefrom 8 to 18.

In all, the attack killed at least 75 people, including severallawmakers, and wounded 96.

An independent third party will review allegations of improperdealings between German Canadian arms dealer Karlheinz Schreiber andformer prime minister Brian Mulroney, the Canadian government said.Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the individual would suggest acourse of action for the government in light of allegations thatSchreiber negotiated a lobbying deal with Mulroney shortly beforeMulroney left office in 1993.

Three Spanish citizens detained over a charity's alleged plot totake 103 African children to Europe returned home on a Spanishgovernment jet, after tense diplomatic negotiations with Chad. Thethree flight crew members and a detained Belgian pilot, due to leaveon a Belgian military aircraft, had been charged with complicity inthe alleged kidnapping plot, a Chadian lawyer said.

Singapore has freed two Islamic radicals after holding them forfour years for belonging to the Southeast Asian militant groupJemaah Islamiah, which is linked to al-Qaeda, the government said.The Home Affairs Ministry said that the two men, detained inNovember 2003, had been released Thursday but that their movementswould be monitored for two years.

A gunman shot and wounded four Venezuelan police officers and abystander at a student demonstration in an Andean city as violenceescalated during protests against President Hugo Chavez's plan toscrap term limits. A demonstrator fired 12 shots during a standoffbetween students and police on the edge of a university campus inMerida, a city official said.

From News Services