BEIJING

American boy becomes youngest to summit Everest

A 13-year-old Big Bear, Calif., boy has become the youngest climber to reach the top of Mount Everest.

A spokesman for Jordan Romero said the boy’s team called by satellite phone from the summit of the world’s highest peak today.

The previous record for the youngest climber to scale Everest had been held by Temba Tsheri of Nepal. He reached the peak at age 16.

Romero was climbing Everest with a team including his father and three Sherpa guides. He left for the peak from the base camp on the Chinese side of the mountain.

NEW DELHI

More than 150 feared dead in Air India plane accident

An Air India plane arriving from Dubai crashed this morning after it overshot a runway while trying to land in southern India, and officials feared as many as 160 people on board were killed.

Television images showed smoke rising from the aircraft at the airport in the city of Mangalore as rescuers struggled to reach those inside.

Officials in the state of Karnataka said of the 169 people believed to be on board, only six or seven might have survived.

TEHRAN, Iran

Mothers leave Iran, though jailed Americans not freed

The mothers of three Americans jailed in Iran for 10 months left for home Friday, getting one last chance to embrace their children but failing to secure their immediate release.

In a glimmer of hope, Iran announced that two of its nationals held in Iraq by U.S. forces for years were freed Friday. The release raised the possibility that a behind-the-scenes swap was in the offing or that their release was a gesture of goodwill in an attempt to free the Americans.

The Iranians’ release “may have some diplomatic effect on this case,” said the Americans’ lawyer, Masoud Shafii.

The U.S. has said it is not offering a direct swap, and Iranian officials made no public connection between the freed Iranians and the Americans.

The Americans were arrested in July along the Iran-Iraq border, and Iran has accused them of espionage. Their families say the three were simply hiking in Iraq and that if they crossed the border, it was accidental.

TOKYO

Clinton promises response to N. Korean attack on ship

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday vowed that the United States would not let North Korea’s apparent deadly attack on a South Korean warship go “unanswered” in an indication that the increasingly tense standoff on the Korean peninsula is threatening to overshadow her plans to spend the week focusing on U.S. relations with China.

After a meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, Clinton said that the United States “strongly condemns” the attack and that both countries would push for not simply a regional response to the attack but an international one as well.

“Let me be clear,” Clinton said in her first public comments on the March 26 attack. “This will not be and cannot be business as usual. There must be an international — not just a regional — response.”