A noisy rumble sparked panic at a school outside the Haitian capital Wednesday, killing one student and wounding dozens as jitters remained nearly two weeks after a deadly school collapse, authorities said.

`The accident occurred when a trailer passing by caused a panic. Schoolchildren then rushed towards the exit,` civil protection director Alta Jean-Baptiste told the AFP.

Malnutrition levels among children in the conflict-riven east of the Democratic Republic of Congo have risen 10-fold in some areas, US-based humanitarian agency World Vision warned on Wednesday.

`The number of children suffering from severe malnutrition in eastern Congo is rising dramatically as a result of the increased conflict,` a statement said.

Malnutrition levels among children in the conflict-riven east of the Democratic Republic of Congo have risen 10-fold in some areas, US-based humanitarian agency World Vision warned on Wednesday.

`The number of children suffering from severe malnutrition in eastern Congo is rising dramatically as a result of the increased conflict,` a statement said.

WEDMADANI, Sudan, Nov 17, 2007 (AFP) - Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir on Saturday denounced as modern-day slavery a French charity's attempt to fly out more than 100 children from war-racked western Sudan.

'This we can call a slave market,' said Beshir in Wedmadani, the capital of Al-Jazira state, at an event marking the 18th anniversary of an armed auxillary that fought against ex-rebels during the war between north and south Sudan.

WASHINGTON, Oct 19, 2007 (AFP) - Syrups and other anti-flu medicines should not be given to children who are six years old or younger, a independent advisory panel to the US Food and Drug Administration said Friday.

'The committee expressed concern about the lack of studies that positively demonstrate the benefit of these products for children and they were uncomfortable with the extrapolation of the benefits that have been demonstrated in adults to use these products in children,' Doctor John Jenkins, head of the FDA's division that handles new drugs, told reporters.

LONDON, Oct 19, 2007 (AFP) - Five British boys aged between 12 and 14 were each sentenced to two years' youth detention by a judge Friday over the death of a pensioner they attacked as he was playing cricket with his son.

The youths threw sticks and stones at Ernest Norton, 67, as he practised with his 17-year-old son James in Erith, Kent, southern England last year.

Norton, a former draughtsman, was struck by two stones -- one the size of half a brick -- which fractured his cheekbone, and he collapsed with a heart attack.

MOSCOW, Oct 18, 2007 (AFP) - Russia's grandest toy store, a gift to Soviet children after the dark days of Stalin, is facing a capitalist makeover that critics fear will sap the soul from one of Moscow's most cherished sites.

The Detsky Mir building, an Art Deco landmark in the heart of the booming capital, is set to undergo reconstruction that experts say could deface the last major work of one of the city's most celebrated architects.

Remodeling details are still sketchy but fans fear the worst in a capital where rampant construction often tramples over heritage.

PARIS, Oct 17, 2007 (AFP) - The most ambitious attempt to engineer a vaccine against malaria has cleared another key hurdle, with tests among African babies showing the prototype to be safe and highly protective, a study released on Wednesday said.

Known by its lab name of RTS,S the prototype is raising high hopes of the first vaccine shield against a disease that claims more than a million lives a year -- 800,000 of them African children aged under five -- and sickens hundreds of millions more.

GENEVA, Oct 17, 2007 (AFP) - South Africa must do more to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS amid rising child deaths and over one million children orphaned by the disease, the UN children's fund (UNICEF) said Wednesday.

'Each year, 100,000 children contract the AIDS virus in South Africa, and half of them die before the age of two,' UNICEF's representative in the country Macharia Kamau told journalists.

HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of child mortality in South Africa, and accounts for between 40 and 60 percent of all deaths nationwide, UNICEF said.

TOKYO, Oct 17, 2007 (AFP) - Police were hunting Wednesday for a man accused of stabbing to death a seven-year-old girl found in front of her grandparents' home, in the latest crime against children to shock Japan.

Yuzuki Unose was found Tuesday evening lying face down with stab wounds to her back and abdomen outside her grandparents' home in a suburb of the western city of Kobe.

Her mother called an ambulance but the girl died less than two hours after being admitted to a hospital, a police spokesman said.