Violence persists in attempts to rebuild

A bomb exploded near a taxi on a busy Kabul road Tuesday, killing two Afghans, and a U.S. soldier and seven militants died in fighting in the east – the latest wave of violence threatening Western attempts to rebuild Afghanistan.

The U.S.-led coalition announced it had killed more than 600 Taliban rebels in the past six weeks during an operation with Afghan forces to crush insurgents in the south.

Tuesday’s bomb in Kabul – the latest in a series of recent blasts that have rattled nerves in the capital – killed a man and woman riding in a taxi and wounded four other people, police official Faiz Ahmad Hotaq said.

In eastern Kunar province, a U.S. soldier was killed Monday in a gun battle with militants, coalition spokesman Col. Tom Collins said.

Dublin, Ireland

Worker finds ancient psalms

Irish archaeologists Tuesday heralded the discovery of an ancient book of psalms by a construction worker who spotted something while driving the shovel of his backhoe into a bog.

The approximately 20-page book has been dated to the years 800-1000. Trinity College manuscripts expert Bernard Meehan said it was the first discovery of an Irish early medieval document in two centuries.

“This is really a miracle find,” said Pat Wallace, director of the National Museum of Ireland, which has the book stored in refrigeration and facing years of painstaking analysis before being put on public display.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Malaysian princess stabbed by son

A Malaysian princess was stabbed to death by her son as she tried to stop him from attacking her husband, news reports said Tuesday. The son later died of an apparent drug overdose.

Tengku Puteri Kamariah – whose brother is Sultan Ahmad Shah, ruler of the eastern state of Pahang – died Monday at her home in Pekan town, Pahang, the Malay Mail and the New Straits Times reported.

The woman’s son, Tunku Rizal Shahzan, 21, ran at his 74-year-old father wielding a screwdriver, the reports said. Puteri Kamariah intervened and was stabbed in the ensuing struggle.

The father, Tunku Ismail Tunku Sulaiman, was hospitalized with slash wounds to the stomach, the Star newspaper reported.

Vatican City

Vatican attacks EU stem cell funding

A Vatican newspaper on Tuesday condemned a decision by the European Union to continue funding embryonic human stem cell research, calling it the result of “a twisted sense of progress.”

The 25-nation bloc agreed Monday in Brussels to keep up the funding through 2013, but only under new rules that prevent human cloning and destroying embryos.

Vatican Radio said the EU compromise was “unacceptable for the Church.” The Roman Catholic Church teaches that life begins at conception and forbids research on embryos.