World News in Brief

Iran will begin large-scale air defense war games today aimed at protecting its nuclear facilities from possible attack, a senior military commander said yesterday, reflecting concerns that Israel could make good on threats to strike militarily. The five-day drill will involve Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard and the regular army, said air force Gen. Ahmad Mighani. (AP)

Rescuers working in frigid cold and darkness tried to reach 66 people believed trapped half a kilometer underground after a huge gas explosion yesterday ripped through a coal mine in northern China, killing at least 42 people. The pre-dawn blast at the state-run Xinxing mine in Heilongjiang province near the border with Russia is latest to hit China's mining industry, the world's deadliest. (AP)

Scientists moved yesterday to prepare the world's largest atom smasher for exploring the depths of matter after successfully restarting the $10 billion machine following more than a year of repairs. The nuclear physicists working on the Large Hadron Collider were surprised that they could so quickly get beams of protons whizzing near the speed of light during the restart late Friday, said James Gillies, spokesman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The machine was heavily damaged by a simple electrical fault in September last year. (AP)

Sri Lanka will release next month the remaining 136,000 Tamil refugees still in the squalid and overrun government camps where they've been detained since the country's civil war ended six months ago, a top official said yesterday. Some 300,000 war refugees were forced into the camps after fleeing the final months of the government's decades-long war with the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels, which ended in May. (AP)

Prosecutors yesterday requested life in prison for an American student and her ex-boyfriend accused in the fatal stabbing of her British roommate during a drug-fueled sex game - charges the U.S. woman has dismissed as pure fantasy. In their closing arguments, the prosecutors said Amanda Knox and Italian Raffaele Sollecito should be convicted on charges of murder and sexual violence for the 2007 slaying of Meredith Kercher. They deny wrongdoing. (AP)