WORLD BRIEFS

PAKISTAN: 4 more oil tankers burned

Police say gunmen have torched four more tankers carrying fuel for NATO forces in Afghanistan, killing one of the truck drivers. Wednesday's assault was the latest on supply convoys heading for Afghanistan since Pakistan shut a key border crossing to international forces last week. Police official Shah Nawaz Khan says the attack occurred in the parking area of a roadside hotel on the outskirts of the southwest city of Quetta.

COLOMBIA: Mine rescue this weekend?

Rapid progress in rescue efforts could result in the 33 miners trapped underground since Aug. 5 seeing daylight as early as this weekend, government officials said Tuesday. Three simultaneous drilling operations are aiming 2,300 feet down in the San Jose mine in the Atacama Desert. One of them, the so-called T-130 or Plan B hole, is advancing at a rate of more than 100 feet a day and could reach the miners in a few more days.

THAILAND: Russian faces extradition

An alleged Russian arms smuggler dubbed "The Merchant of Death" was led off by masked commandos Tuesday after a court removed a legal obstacle to his U.S. extradition, a struggle that has landed Thailand in the midst of a diplomatic tussle between Washington and Moscow. Viktor Bout, who allegedly supplied weapons that fueled civil wars in South America, the Middle East and Africa, was arrested in March 2008 in Bangkok in a sting operation.

INDIA: A language discovered

A previously unknown language has been uncovered in the far reaches of northeastern India, researchers reported Tuesday. Koro, spoken by just 800 to 1,200 people, could soon face extinction as younger speakers abandon it for more widely used languages such as Hindi or English. Koro is unlike any language in the various branches of the Tibeto-Burman family, a collection of 400 related languages used by peoples across Asia, according to the two National Geographic fellows who announced the discovery in Washington.