WORLD BRIEFS

CHINA: Bomb attack kills 7

A bomb attack in the restive Xinjiang region killed seven people and wounded 14 Thursday, and an exile group claimed that victims included members of the local police force. It was the deadliest violence in Xinjiang since bloody rioting in the regional capital of Urumqi last year left 200 people dead. The vast region bordering Central Asia has long been beset by ethnic conflict and separatist violence, leading to a massive crackdown by security forces. Thursday's blast went off after a man of the Uighur ethnic group drove a three-wheeled vehicle laden with explosives into a crowd of people in a suburb in Aksu city in southwestern Xinjiang, said Hou Hanmin, a regional government spokeswoman. She said the suspect was injured and captured immediately. Xinhua News Agency reported that a woman also played a role in the attack and died in the blast. It said the couple threw explosives from a three-wheeled motor vehicle.

THE KOREAS: China pushes for talks

China's top nuclear envoy traveled to North Korea this week to discuss the resumption of six-party talks on the North's weapons program, Beijing said. North Korea walked away from the talks last year in protest at an international condemnation of a long-range rocket launch. Prospects for restarting the talks were put into doubt after an international investigation in May blamed North Korea for torpedoing the South Korean warship Cheonan and killing 46 sailors. China's Foreign Ministry said its chief nuclear envoy, Wu Dawei, visited North Korea from Monday to Wednesday to discuss resuming the talks.

BRITAIN: Bomber's release defended

Scotland's justice minister, Kenny MacAskill, defended his decision to free the convicted Lockerbie bomber on health grounds a year ago, saying that predicting how long a cancer patient might live is "not an exact science." He said the Scottish government had "nothing to fear" from a new inquiry by U.S. senators into the release of Libyan Abdel Basset al-Megrahi a year ago Friday, and he would be prepared to meet the senators if they came to Scotland.