Ankara - Future NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Monday attempted to soothe Muslim antipathy to the role he played in 2005 as Danish prime minister when he failed to condemn cartoons of the Muslim prophet Mohammad published in a Danish newspaper.

Luebeck, Germany  - Two more German students died from drinking tainted alcohol during a holiday in Turkey, bringing the death toll to three, doctors confirmed Monday.

The 17- and 19-year-old students were pronounced clinically dead late on Saturday, doctors at the University Clinic in the north German city of Luebeck said.

The two vocational college students were flown home on Thursday evening and taken to the hospital's intensive care unit near their homes, where doctors battled to save their lives.

A hospital official said the case had been taken over by the Luebeck prosecutor's department because the two young men died an unnatural death.

Ankara - US President Barack Obama arrived in Turkey on Sunday on
an official visit that would see him fulfilling a pledge to visit the
Muslim nation in his first 100 days in office.

Obama was expected to seek to emphasize his administration's new
approaches to regional problems in talks with Turkish leaders President
Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the capital
Ankara on Monday.

Discussions on withdrawing US troops from Iraq, stepping up
reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan and new US moves to engage Iran

Rome  - Hundreds of Afghan children who make up the majority of unaccompanied minors living on the streets of Rome mostly arrive in Italy following hazardous journeys through Greece and Turkey and the countries of the former Yugoslavia, Italian news reports said Sunday.

The discovery this week by police of 24 Afghans - aged between 10 and 15 - living in makeshift underground shelters at Rome's Ostiense railway station, has cast the spotlight on the plight of immigrant street-children in the Italian capital.

Wellington  - The head of New Zealand's main returned servicemen's organization urged young people to stay away from annual World War I commemorations in Turkey because they are damaging the environment and disrespecting the dead, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

Tens of thousands of young New Zealanders and Australians go to the Gallipoli peninsula every year to mark the anniversary of their ancestors' disastrous landing on April 25, 1915, to fight Turkish troops.

Strasbourg, France/Ankara - US President Barack Obama was instrumental in ending Turkish obstruction to the appointment of Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as the new NATO secretary general, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday.

Erdogan told Turkish television that Obama had offered Ankara a number of guaranties, which he did not detail.