Mines Explosives

In a nondescript Woodland Hills office overlooking Neiman Marcus, a father-son team have found their calling dealing with explosives. Safely identifying and disarming them, that is. Along the way, their foundation has been credited with saving the lives and limbs of countless people around the world. As his career as a chemical engineer wound down in the mid-1990s, Joe Trocino, 84, knew he didn't want "to sit in a rocking chair and watch the cars go by."

A NATO vehicle rolled over a mine in eastern Afghanistan's Ghazni province, triggering a blast that killed a soldier, military officials said. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization did not state the soldier's nationality, but most of its troops in the area are American. The United Nations, meanwhile, said it had suspended food aid shipments to seven provinces after attacks on its trucks.

Five children who stopped to play with a land mine on the way to Friday prayers died when one threw the device against a wall. The deaths of the children, ages 7 to 12, were shocking even in this bloodstained capital, where civilians often fall victim to roadside bombs, assassination attempts and gun battles.

A truck carrying soldiers drove over a land mine in western Colombia, killing six people in an attack an official blamed on the nation's largest guerrilla group. The blast, 93 miles southwest of Bogota, in Tolima province, killed five soldiers and a sub-official, said an official with the army's 5th division who requested anonymity before a scheduled announcement of the attack by a superior. The attack was blamed on the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels triggered a powerful antipersonnel mine against a government navy convoy in northern Sri Lanka, killing at least nine sailors and injuring seven, military spokesman Brig. Prasad Samarasinghe said. The blast occurred in Chettikulam in Vavuniya district, 130 miles north of the capital, Colombo, he said.

A land mine killed 10 sailors and their driver on a military bus in northeastern Sri Lanka, the military said. It blamed the Tamil Tiger rebels. Nine other sailors were wounded. Two police officers were killed today in a similar attack near Trincomalee, 140 miles northeast of the capital, Colombo.

Eight people were killed when land mines detonated near two military vehicles in separate attacks in northeastern Sri Lanka, officials said. Three were killed when one mine exploded near a jeep carrying air force personnel returning to camp, said Capt. Ajantha Perera, an air force spokesman. He blamed Tamil Tiger rebels. Earlier, a similar mine had exploded as a bus carrying troops approached the town of Vavuniya, said Gamini Silva, deputy inspector general of police.

COLOMBIA is a country known for both terrific music and terrible violence. Now a group of artists led by Juanes, the country's international pop superstar, are joining forces for a Los Angeles concert to try to use music to help relieve the suffering caused by Colombia's 40-year-old civil war.

A land mine exploded under a U.S. vehicle south of the Afghan capital Saturday, killing four soldiers in the deadliest incident for American troops in Afghanistan in almost 10 months, the military said. The blast highlighted the dangers still facing foreign and Afghan troops more than three years after the fall of the Taliban, although there were conflicting accounts about whether the mine was freshly laid or leftover from Afghanistan's long wars.

Action film star Jackie Chan said Wednesday that he's campaigning for a global ban on landmines and is scouting film sites in Cambodia to make a movie about the effort. Chan, a United Nations goodwill ambassador, arrived by plane in Battambang, a provincial town located 155 miles northwest of the capital, Phnom Penh. Recovering from decades of civil war, Cambodia remains one of the most heavily mined places in the world.