KABUL, Afghanistan

Suicide bombers kill close adviser to Afghan president

Gunmen strapped with explosives killed a close adviser to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and a member of parliament on Sunday in another insurgent strike against the Afghan leader’s inner circle.

Jan Mohammed Khan was an adviser to Karzai on tribal issues and was close to the president, a fellow Pashtun.

His killing, which the Taliban claimed responsibility for, came less than a week after the assassination of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president’s half-brother and one of the most powerful men in southern Afghanistan.

Two men wearing suicide bomb vests and armed with guns attacked Khan’s home in the western Kabul district of Karti Char, said Defense Ministry official Gen. Zahir Wardak. Khan, who was governor of the Pashtun-dominated Uruzgan province in the south from 2002 until March 2006, was shot along with Uruzgan lawmaker Mohammed Ashim Watanwal, the official said.

Police killed one of the attackers before he could detonate his explosives, while the other was still barricated inside the home, said the head of the Kabul police investigation unit, Mohammed Zahir. A member of the police’s anti-terrorism unit was also killed, he added. The surviving guman was alone in the house, Zahir said.

The assassination came as international military forces handed over security for Bamiyan province to Afghan security forces, part of a transition process in which seven areas are to be handed over to Karzai’s government this month.

JERUSALEM

Political protest ship may reach Hamas-run Gaza today

A protest ship trying to break Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip has set sail and should reach the Hamas-run territory soon, a pro-Palestinian activist said Sunday.

Nahla Chahal said the ship, the Dignity al-Karama, was expected reach Gaza by Monday unless the Israeli navy stops it. The ship was part of a larger protest flotilla that had hoped to break the blockade several weeks ago but was thwarted by Greece.

Speaking from France, Chahal said the Dignity left a Greek port late Saturday. It is carrying 16 passengers, including activists from France, Sweden and Canada as well as an Israeli newspaper correspondent and reporters from the Al-Jazeera satellite channel. She said the mission was solely to draw attention to the situation in Gaza.

“We are making a political statement, we are not carrying any aid,” Chahal said.

The Israeli military declined comment, but has said it will stop any attempt to break the sea blockade of Gaza.

Israel says the blockade, imposed after Hamas militants seized control of the territory in 2007, is crucial to prevent weapons smuggling. Critics say the closure, which limits the flow of goods and people in and out of Gaza, amounts to collective punishment of the territory’s 1.6 million residents.

GENEVA

World health agency warns against ‘unreliable’ TB tests

Widely used blood tests to detect tuberculosis are “dangerous” to patients because they are unreliable and can produce wrong results, the World Health Organization warned Sunday.

The U.N. health agency said it will issue an unprecedented recommendation against using such tests for the infectious lung disease that affects some 14 million people worldwide. As much as a third of the world’s population is thought to harbor the bacteria that causes TB.

“The tests are not reliable and a waste of money and time, putting proper care at risk,” said Mario Raviglione, the director of WHO’s Stop TB department.

A review of the tests has shown that they produce too many false negative and false positive, according to WHO.

Raviglione told The Associated Press that the blood tests “are in fact dangerous to patients, since some cases will not be detected and some will be called TB when in fact they do not have it.”

CARACAS, Venezuela

In Cuba for chemotherapy, Chavez easily avoids media

In his monthlong fight against cancer, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has placed utmost importance on secrecy, carefully offering only scraps of information about his condition.

Now, as he begins planned chemotherapy in Cuba, Chavez appears to have found the perfect place where he can tightly guard details of his illness from the news media far away.

Typical of the silence Chavez has maintained over his health problems, he hasn’t said how long the chemotherapy is likely to last, and there was no immediate confirmation from either Cuba or Venezuela that the treatments had in fact begun.

LOS ANGELES

Epic traffic jams a no-show as bridge work ends early

The event that many feared would be the “Carmageddon” of epic traffic jams cruised calmly to a finish Sunday, with bridge work on the Los Angeles roadway completed nearly a full day ahead of schedule and officials reopening a 10-mile stretch of the busy freeway.