NEW DELHI — Hundreds of students jammed into a narrow school staircase panicked and set off a stampede today that left five girls dead and 31 other students injured, a New Delhi hospital official said.

Five of the injured were in critical condition, said O.P. Kalra, medical superintendent of the Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital, where the injured boys and girls were taken.

The stampede occurred early in the school day as students arrived for an exam, Kalra told reporters. The Press Trust of India news agency said the stampede was set off by rumors about an electrical short-circuit in the government-run school.

The students were from 8 to 16 years of age, police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said.

MEXICO CITY — It was 1 p.m. when the control tower at the Mexico City airport got the first word of a bizarre drama that would play out over the next two hours: The pilot of Aeromexico Flight 576 radioed that a man aboard claimed to have a bomb and wanted to talk with President Felipe Calderon.Jose Flores, a 44-year-old Bolivian preacher who lives in Mexico, had gotten the word from God that he had to warn Mexicans of an impending disaster — an earthquake "like none there has ever been," he told reporters after being hustled off the plane by police without anyone being injured.Unsuspecting passengers, including Americans and French tourists traveling from the beach resort of Cancun to Mexico City, sat not fully aware of what was happening as the pilot negotiated with Flores, bringing the plane to a smooth landing and after an hour or so of talking winning an agreement to end the standoff.The crisis began when Flores told a flight attendant a juice can he had was a bomb. The flight attendant notified the plane's captain over the intercom, Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna told reporters.

BAGHDAD — A suicide truck bomber hit a Kurdish village in northern Iraq before dawn today, killing at least 19 people and injuring 30 others, officials said, in what appeared to be the latest in a string of attacks targeting ethnic minorities in the region.No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing, but it bore the hallmarks of al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni insurgents who remain active in Mosul and surrounding areas.A police officer and health official in Mosul said the bomb went off around 12:30 a.m. in the village of Wardek, about 35 miles southeast of the city — a region where U.S. commanders warned insurgents appear to be trying to stoke an Arab-Kurdish conflict.The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.Local security forces fired on the driver when he refused to stop, but he was still able to detonate his bomb. A second assailant in another explosives-laden truck was shot and killed before his bomb exploded.

KABUL — The U.N.-backed commission investigating fraud in Afghanistan's election issued its first orders today to exclude some ballots from the final tally.The Aug. 20 poll has been increasingly marred by reports of ballot-box stuffing and suspicious tallies. A U.S. monitoring group said "large numbers of polling stations" had more than 100 percent turnout and President Hamid Karzai's top challenger has accused him of "state-engineered" fraud.All ballots from five polling stations in Paktika province should be voided because they show clear evidence of fraud, the Electoral Complaints Commission said in a statement. This is a more severe step than ordering a recount, in which the votes could eventually be included.Decisions by the commission are final under Afghanistan's electoral law. The group is releasing decisions from each province as investigations finish.International censure of the vote has increased since Tuesday, when election officials released preliminary results from 92 percent of polling stations showing Karzai had finally passed the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff. The voiding of ballots could change these results.

BARVIKHA, Russia — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez today said his country recognized the independence of Georgian separatist regions South Ossetia and Abkhazia, a boost to Russia which had been almost alone in recognizing them."We will soon begin actions to establish diplomatic relations with these countries," Chavez said at the opening of a meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev at his residence outside Moscow.Russia recognized the two regions as independent shortly after driving Georgian forces out of them in last year's war.