BAHRAIN

A male sailor shot and killed two female sailors in the barracks of the U.S. Naval Support Activity Bahrain base, officials said.

The suspect was critically wounded, said a Navy official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

A State Department official in Washington said that although initial reports suggested the incident might have involved a love triangle, it now appeared that a jilted boyfriend shot his ex-girlfriend and then himself.

It was not clear how the second woman might have been involved, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still underway. No names were released.

CHINA

37 killed in fire at shoe factory

A fire at an unlicensed shoe factory killed 37 people and injured more than a dozen, Chinese authorities said.

The fire started Sunday night, said a woman in the information office of the Communist Party committee in Putian, a town in Fujian province. It was probably caused by an electrical wire that caught fire, a spokeswoman for the city police said.

BRAZIL

Man sentenced in slaying of U.S. nun

A Brazilian judge, in a retrial, sentenced a gunman to 27 years in prison for killing U.S. nun and rain forest defender Dorothy Stang, handing down the same punishment as in the first trial.

The jury in the state of Para voted unanimously after the automatic retrial to convict Rayfran das Neves Sales for the Feb. 12, 2005, killing, court spokeswoman Gloria Lima said.

Sales claimed that Stang, 73, threatened him. At his first trial, Sales said he mistook her Bible for a gun.

From Times Wire Reports