In the World

KABUL, Afghanistan - The Taliban claimed responsibility Sunday for a nighttime assault on Kandahar Air Base that wounded a number of coalition soldiers and civilian employees at the biggest NATO base in southern Afghanistan.

Also Sunday, a government official confirmed that a three-day conference to discuss peace prospects with the Taliban has been postponed a second time, from next Saturday until June 2.

The Saturday night attack against Kandahar base was the second ground assault on a major NATO installation this week. Officials said a number of soldiers and civilians were wounded, but they gave no figures. They said there were no confirmed deaths among the more than 20,000 people who live and work at the base. - AP

LONDON - There is very little activity at the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, Icelandic officials and scientists said Sunday, but it is too early to say whether the eruption that has disrupted global air travel is over.

Iceland's Meteorological Office said "the eruption activity is minimal." Civil Protection Agency official Iris Marelsdottir said some steam was coming out of the volcano, but no ash.

"Now we can only wait and see," she said. "It's too early to say this is over, but at the moment it is quiet."

The volcano erupted April 14 for the first time in nearly two centuries. Danger to planes from the volcanic ash plume led most northern European countries to shut their airspace April 15 to 20, grounding an estimated 10 million travelers worldwide. - AP

KINGSTON, Jamaica - Masked men torched a police station and traded gunfire with security forces in a patchwork of barricaded slums in Jamaica's capital Sunday, prompting the government to declare a state of emergency.

Sporadic gunshots rang out in gritty West Kingston, where defiant supporters of Christopher "Dudus" Coke, a Jamaican "don" sought by the United States on charges of drug and arms trafficking, turned his Tivoli Gardens neighborhood and other areas into a virtual fortress with trashed cars and barbed wire.

Police said the attacks by gangsters roaming the streets with high-powered guns and improvised weapons were unprovoked. It called for all "decent and law-abiding citizens" in the troubled areas to immediately evacuate their homes and said security forces would ferry them out safely.

The violence erupted after a week of rising tensions in the capital that began when Prime Minister Bruce Golding reversed his long-standing refusal to extradite Coke.

- AP

Crash investigators on Sunday pulled the black box from the charred, twisted wreckage of an Air India plane that crashed near Mangalore, India, the day before, killing 158 of 166 passengers.

Islamist militants attacked Somalia's presidential compound and other government positions in the capital of Mogadishu on Sunday, and at least 15 people were killed.