The education department said in a written statement the school must "cease certain interventions that threaten the health and safety of students at the school. Failure to do so would affect its approval to serve New York state students."

The center's attorney, Michael Flammia, called the allegations "absolutely not true" and said the state ignored its own November report that determined the center was doing an excellent job. He alleged the most recent evaluation was biased and prompted by a parent's lawsuit.

Education Department spokesman Alan Ray disputed Flammia's characterization of the earlier report, saying that it found compliance only in a limited number of areas.

The Rotenberg Center provides an intensive, 24-hour program that begins with a typical school setting, but about half the residents require the "aversive therapy" of electric shock, according to Rotenberg staff. The center describes the one- to two-second shocks as similar to a bee sting.

For years, the state has contracted with the facility, where autistic and other disabled students wear backpack-like devices that shock them when they misbehave.

Some New York parents said electric shock helped improve their children's behavior. Some of the youths had repeatedly bitten themselves or slammed their heads against walls so violently there was a concern they could blind themselves.

"It all comes down to a philosophical opposition to this form of treatment," Flammia said.

Police said Walker, 32, had self-inflicted stab wounds in his chest and marijuana and methamphetamine in his system. He and his younger son were hospitalized and expected to survive.

Walker faces charges of murder and attempted murder.

Despite the knifepoint abduction, it took seven hours for authorities to issue an Amber Alert. The process was slowed because Indiana does not normally issue Amber Alerts in child custody cases, police said.

Bill Bergherm, Terre Haute assistant chief of detectives, said there was not "a lot of delay" in issuing the alert. Police first had to determine whether they had enough information to issue it, he said.

Walker's wife, Theresa, had told him on Sunday she wanted a divorce and moved into a shelter with her sons, authorities said. She filed an order of protection against him Tuesday morning, saying she had received a threatening call from him, police said.

Later that day, Smothers said, she saw the boys and their father at the lake, where they had been fishing and eating hot dogs. "All day I heard them say, 'I love you, Dad,'" Smothers said.

Smothers' family called police later after seeing the Amber Alert on TV.

Authorities surrounded the lake, and Walker jumped into the water with his children, police said. Monte had neck and puncture wounds in his chest; Collin was found in 12 feet of water with his throat slashed and his chest marked with puncture wounds. The coroner said it appeared Collin had been stabbed to death.

Blood and a steak knife were found in the trailer Walker fled, investigators said.

Vigo County court records show Walker was convicted of methamphetamine possession in 2003 and placed on probation.

The Amber Alert system, created in 1996 in response to the kidnapping and death of a 9-year-old Texas girl, is designed to notify communities of children's abductions. Each state has its own rules for issuing alerts.

Police spokesman Paul Browne said the suspect admitted stabbing two Canadians, a Mexican immigrant and a young man from Texas.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said there was no evidence to suggest the man was targeting tourists. He said investigators recovered the folding knife used in at least two of the attacks when they arrested the suspect.

Charges were pending against Kenny Alexis, who had been living in a shelter.

Police said two Canadian women were each stabbed in the back about 4 a.m. by a man who had engaged them in a short conversation near the W Hotel.

Two hotel security officers tended to the women and called 911, while two doormen followed the man to a nearby McDonald's. Officers nabbed the suspect as he was leaving the restaurant, police said.

An hour earlier, a 30-year-old man was stabbed twice in the stomach a few blocks away as he and a friend waited on a subway platform in Rockefeller Center. Police said the attacker was after a cell phone.

On Tuesday afternoon, Christopher McCarthy of Houston was knifed by a man sitting across from him in a subway car on Manhattan's Upper West Side, an attack police said was random and apparently unprovoked.

McCarthy was in critical but stable condition after barely surviving the deep wound to his chest, doctors said. His father, Joe, said his son had forgiven the assailant and hopes the attacker "can get help."

Alexis also wielded the knife when a store employee confronted him about stealing two beers from a market Wednesday, the commissioner said. No one was hurt in that incident.

Despite the attacks, some tourists said New York still feels safe.

"There are a lot of police around. I don't think these stabbings are just random acts," said Scott McCoig, 24, of Detroit.

McCoig said he will still use the subway. "It's the best way to travel," he said.

The attacks drew comparisons with the 1990 killing of a 22-year-old tourist from Utah who was stabbed in a subway station while defending his mother during a robbery. Seven youths were convicted in the murder; all were sentenced to maximum terms of 25 years to life in prison.

Trouble flared in the city centre where thousands of supporters had spent the afternoon drinking in a square.

Hundreds of riot police were deployed as thugs threw bottles at each other and the police.

There was more violence as large numbers of fans moved to a nearby giant screen televising the match.

Dortmund police spokeswoman Inspector Saskia Schneider said: "About two hours before the game some people known to be violent were about to be arrested.

"During that process police were massively attacked by the violent perpetrators.

"This whole situation spilled over to other fan groups. They got involved and started attacking each other.

Earlier, 55 Poles were arrested at the train station and in the city as a "preventative" measure.

Germany won the match 1-0 through a 90th minute Oliver Neuville goal.

"The bus was blown over," 37-year-old survivor Chintha Irangani told Reuters. She was taking her three children to a clinic. All of them died.

"There was blood and body parts everywhere. I fell unconscious. I saw my children's bodies at the hospital."

A Reuters Television cameraman said the road beside the overturned bus was covered with glass and blood. In the hospital, he saw torn and burned corpses including many women and children. Officials said 13 children were among the dead.

Most on the bus were from the island's majority Sinhalese community. The government said the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) wanted to provoke an ethnic backlash against minority Tamils to support their demands for a separate Tamil homeland.

"We have to seriously consider the ceasefire agreement and possibly restructure it," government spokesman Kehilya Rambukwella told a news conference.

The Tigers denied involvement in the attack. Few have believed their denials of responsibility for similar attacks on the military. More than 500 people have died since early April, and many fear the island risks a return to civil war.

"We have no involvement whatsoever in this killing of innocent civilians," said head of the Tiger peace secretariat S. Puleedevan. "The Sri Lankan government has a responsibility to investigate law and order in their territory."

Sri Lanka's stock market closed down almost three percent on the news, with traders fearing a return to war could see Black Tiger suicide bombers hit the streets of the capital, sending investors fleeing from the $20 billion economy.

CIVILIANS IN SIGHTS

"The message coming out is that they will not stop at anything," said Jehan Perera, national director of think-tank the National Peace Council. "They are saying they will also target civilians if their demands are not met. Or they could be trying to push the government into a war."

The rebels said the government launched air raids on northeastern coastal areas of rebel territory. There were casualties, they said, but gave no further details.

The government refused to comment on any retaliation, but a military source said Israeli-built Kfir fighter bombers were being used to hit rebel targets. They were the first air strikes on the rebels since early May.

Many fear the peace process is reaching its endgame. The Tigers pulled out of peace talks in April but had agreed to talks last week in Oslo over the safety of ceasefire monitors. But on arrival, they refused to meet the government.

Mediator Norway last week wrote to both sides asking them to recommit themselves to the truce. The government replied and said it was committed, but the Tigers have yet to respond.

But diplomats say neither the government nor the Tigers have shown sufficient flexibility and fear that if violence continues the country will gradually fall back into a war that has already killed more than 64,000 people.

Indonesia attracted international attention last month when the H5N1 virus killed as many as seven members of a single family in north Sumatra. Experts said there could have been limited human-to-human transmission in this cluster case.

Nyoman Kandun, a director-general at the health ministry, said the WHO laboratory's results were based on tests from fluid from the girl's lungs.

"An earlier WHO test of the girl's nasal swab and fluid from her throat had showed up negative. But then we sent another specimen of fluid from her lung membrane. And that is positive," Kandun told Reuters.

Another health ministry official had earlier said that two days before the girl died, her 10-year-old brother had also died after showing flu-like symptoms, but health officials did not manage to obtain his samples.

The family reported that a number of chickens near their house died before the children fell sick.

Indonesia has seen a steady rise in the number of human infections and deaths since its first known outbreak of H5N1 in poultry in late 2003.

Bird flu remains essentially an animal disease, but scientists are worried the virus could mutate to a form easily transmitted between humans. That could trigger a pandemic and kill millions.

The four dead were found on the first floor and all appeared to be middle-aged adults or older, Walsh said, although he cautioned that they had not yet been positively identified.

"They didn't have a chance," said Walsh.

Nelson Raposo, 31, lives in a second-floor apartment above the community hall and felt an explosion rattle his floor at about 6:45 p.m. "We just heard the big bang and felt the pressure," said Raposo. "I opened the front door but all I saw was smoke."

As the smoke rose in the hallway, Raposo led his family out a window and onto the roof. The family had to climb down through a tent that had been set up in the back parking lot for the festival.

Another neighbor, David Martin, 31, said he saw a man fleeing the three-story structure with his shirt on fire. The man screamed that his wife was trapped, and he tried to run back inside before he was stopped by firefighters, Martin said.

Police blocked off streets surrounding the building. Neighbors gathered at the yellow caution tape, some whispering in Portuguese and weeping.

Seven burn victims, including a firefighter, were taken to Charlton Memorial Hospital, said spokeswoman Joyce Brennan. None was in critical condition.

Four more victims were taken to Saint Anne's Hospital. Conditions of those patients were not released. Where the remaining injured people were being treated was not immediately clear.

Fall River is located in far southeastern Massachusetts.

Enrique Rueda Pacheco, an organizer of the strikes, said that police had shot and killed two teachers and two minors.

Ulises Ruiz, state governor, denied that any deaths had taken place and demanded the teachers show the bodies.

Rueda claimed that police had removed the bodies from the scene.

Local media said more than 30 people had been injured and that over 50 strikers had been arrested.

Some 40,000 teachers took part in the protests on Wednesday. They initially gained the upper hand, driving police into the Palace Museum but they were then dispersed with tear gas.

Oaxaca, a city that is listed as a World Heritage Site by the United Nations, is capital of the southern Mexican state of the same name.

"Ten people were killed and 15 wounded," said the city's deputy police chief Abdul Hakim Angar.

The dead included labourers and cleaners who took the bus every day to work at the airport, which is run by a US-led coalition that has been in Afghanistan since helping to topple the extremist Taliban government in late 2001.

It was the highest civilian death toll in months of regular attacks in Afghanistan, mostly blamed on Taliban insurgents. There was however no word from the Taliban after Thursday's blast.

"The explosion was huge," said witness Tahir Shah, who helped to carry three wounded people and five bodies from the minibus. Shops and vehicles nearby were damaged and blood and flesh were scattered at the site, witnesses said.

The heavily secured airport, which employs hundreds of Afghan civilians, handles no civilian aircraft, only military planes or those from the United Nations and other aid groups.

Kandahar city sees regular deadly attacks blamed on insurgents fighting for the Taliban movement that was toppled in an invasion led by a US-led coalition.

The Taliban rose up in Kandahar province in the chaos of civil war in the early 1990s and took control of the central government by 1996.

It sheltered the Al-Qaeda network and was removed when it failed to surrender the group's chief Osama bin Laden following the September 11, 2001 suicide attacks on US cities.

Despite the efforts of thousands of Afghan and foreign troops, fighters from the Taliban and other Islamic outfits, including Al-Qaeda, are able to launch increasingly organised attacks, mostly in their traditional strongholds in the south.

NATO secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said in televised remarks in Canada Wednesday that international forces could not fail in Afghanistan as this would allow it again to become a breeding ground for Islamist militants behind terror strikes across the world.

If "we fail there, and if we have the Taliban get it their way, Afghanistan will again become a training camp for terrorists," de Hoop Scheffer told Canadian television network CBC.

"Suppose that Afghanistan would become the black hole again, the failed state it was or failing state under the Taliban ... Where were the terrorists trained? In Afghanistan," he said.

Coalition and Afghan forces in mid-May launched their biggest anti-Taliban operation yet in the southern provinces, which are due in the coming weeks to come under the command of an expanding NATO-led force.

Operation Mountain Thrust, backed by more than 10,000 Afghan and coalition troops, is part on an "ongoing campaign to disrupt enemy forces, interdict safe havens, extend the reach of the government of Afghanistan," a coalition statement said Thursday.

It also aimed to "facilitate good governance, reconstruction and humanitarian assistance." The operation was also intended to "set conditions" for the takeover by NATO's International Security Assistance Force.