TOKYO, July 31, 2008 (AFP) - Japanese authorities said Thursday they were investigating threats to kill young children in central Tokyo, which led the British embassy to issue a warning to its nationals.

Six elementary schools in Tokyo's Minato ward received letters in July threatening to kill children, a municipal official said.

SAN JOSE, July 31, 2008 (AFP) - Less than 10 percent of English teachers in Costa Rica's public schools and colleges have a good command of the language, according to the Ministry of Public Education, citing its own study Wednesday.

LAGOS, July 21, 2008 (AFP) - Nigerian health workers will begin an open-ended strike this week, joining primary and secondary teachers whose own strike has entered a third week, officials said Monday.

MOSCOW, July 18, 2008 (AFP) - Russia's foreign ministry on Friday voiced 'bewilderment and regret' over Japanese school materials that described the disputed Kuril Islands as unlawfully occupied by Russia.

JOHANNESBURG, July 17, 2008 (AFP) - A South African school is to be renamed on Friday after a militant supporter of the now ruling African National Congress who was hanged in 1986 for a bomb attack in a busy shopping mall.

YALA, July 16, 2008 (AFP) - Thailand's army is increasingly using controversial 're-education' camps to indoctrinate young Muslim men in the hope of stopping them from joining a bloody insurgency, officials and activists say.

TOKYO, July 15, 2008 (AFP) - Japanese prosecutors on Tuesday charged the founder of the failed language school Nova for alleged embezzlement, reports said.

Prosecutors in the western city of Osaka indicted Nozomu Sahashi, 56, the founder of what was Japan's largest chain of language schools until last year, on suspicion of embezzlement, Jiji Press reported, without citing sources.

PARIS, July 10, 2008 (AFP) - Preventive malaria treatment in African schools dramatically reduces rates of infection and anaemia among children and may also boost learning potential, according to a study released on Friday.

WASHINGTON, July 10, 2008 (AFP) - Giving women in poor nations better access to birth control and education would help to slash millions of unwanted births in the developing world, the World Bank said Thursday.

FREETOWN, July 10, 2008 (AFP) - Students in Sierra Leone clashed Thursday with striking university workers when they tried to block access to end of term examinations, leaving over a dozen wounded.

The university workers have been staging protests since last week, demanding backlog salaries dating from 2005.