Fireworks blaze kills six in Brazilian dance hall

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- An indoors fireworks display ignited a wooden stage Saturday at an overcrowded dance club in southeastern Brazil, setting off a blaze that killed at least six people and injured 340 others, authorities said.

Patrons panicked as the flames spread through the club, which had no working fire extinguishers and no emergency exit, said Gertel Vaz de Souza, a spokesman for the Belo Horizonte fire department.

The early morning fire started when managers of the "Trem Caipira" dance club set off cascades of fireworks during a break in the music, de Souza said. The fireworks, sheets of incandescent sparklers that appear to drip like liquid, ignited a wooden stage, and the fire quickly spread to plastic foam insulation on the walls.

Report: Chinese boy dies after beat for not counting

BEIJING -- A 5-year-old boy was beaten to death by his father in northern China because he could not count to 100, a newspaper reported Saturday. The father was charged with murder.

The boy, identified as Dongdong, died Nov. 11 after the attack by his father, Li Wenbing, the China Women's News reported in Saturday's editions. The article was linked to China's National Anti-Domestic Violence Day Sunday.

The newspaper said Li, who is divorced from the boy's mother, Zhao Hong, had taken the child for the day and put him to work at his small shop in Taiyuan, a city in northern China's Shanxi province.

Li later demanded that Dongdong count to 100, the newspaper said. The boy refused several times, saying he was sleepy and insisting he had learned in school to count only to 20. Li grew angry and denounced his son as stupid, the newspaper said, and then began to kick and hit Dongdong in the head, abdomen and back.

NATO leader seeks new role for Kosovo troops

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia -- With efforts to build Kosovo's police going well, NATO's top commander here said alliance forces may be able to focus on keeping the province from becoming a haven for international terrorists and on fighting organized crime.

Troops now engaged in routine tasks such as guarding their own barracks could be better used in targeting dangerous elements that remain in the province following a war and a decade of oppression under former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, French Lt. Gen. Marcel Valentin said.

Valentin declined to offer specifics on what the 44,000 NATO-led peacekeepers might do or whether he believed Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network was using the largely Muslim southern Yugoslav province for operations.

Maoist rebels in Nepal kill 37 soldiers, police

KATMANDU, Nepal -- Nepalese leaders met to consider tough anti-terrorism measures Saturday, after Maoist rebels launched a wave of attacks that ended a four-month cease-fire and killed at least 37 soldiers and police.

The rebels, who are fighting to topple Nepal's constitutional monarchy, swooped on an army post, police stations and government installations across the Himalayan country late Friday, killing 14 soldiers and at least 23 police, Interior Security Minister Khum Bahadur Khadka said.

He said authorities believed up to 80 rebels died in gunbattles. The figures could not be independently confirmed.

-- From wire reports