Israeli helicopter crashes, kills 7

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) - An Israeli air force helicopter crashed during a training mission over the Judean Desert yesterday, killing seven troops.

Maj. Gen. Herzl Bodinger said the U.S.-made Sikorsky helicopter had just dropped off a squad of soldiers in a surveillance training exercise and was taking off again when it dropped sharply and hit the ground.

The crash happened near Mizpeh Shalem, a communal farm near the Dead Sea.

Belarus, Russia celebrate union

MINSK, Belarus (AP) - Tens of thousands of demonstrators, mostly Communists, marched through downtown Minsk yesterday in support of a new union between Belarus and Russia.

Hundreds of students held a counter-demonstration denouncing a treaty that would integrate the governments and economies of the former Soviet republic and Moscow.

A week earlier, 15,000 people held a similar march after President Alexander Lukashenko announced the treaty, which is to be signed tomorrow in Moscow.

5 Americans ignore ban, take medicine to Iraqi hospital

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Flouting a U.S. travel ban to Iraq, five Americans took medicine to a children's hospital yesterday and challenged the U.S. government to prosecute them.

The Americans, from the group Voices in the Wilderness, delivered four sacks and three boxes of medicine, plus candy for children at al-Qadissiya Children's Hospital.

The supplies ranged from antibiotics to aspirin to vitamins, all in short supply since comprehensive United Nations sanctions were imposed in response to Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Amy Tan silenced by Chinese police

BEIJING (AP) - Chinese police prevented American author Amy Tan from speaking at a fund-raising dinner, apparently because the event was on behalf of Chinese orphans, organizers said yesterday.

Police first asked the Holiday Inn Lido to cancel the Saturday night dinner benefiting the Wisconsin-based Philip Hayden Foundation because of permit violations, hosts and guests said.

The authorities then allowed it as long as Tan would not speak, decorations for the charity were removed and the 450 guests were divided among three rooms.

China's treatment of orphans became a sensitive subject for the government last year after reports by British television and a human rights group raised questions about death rates at state-run orphanages.