BRIEFLY: Depression tests urged for all teens

An influential government-appointed medical panel is urging doctors to routinely screen all American teens for depression —- a bold step that acknowledges that nearly 2 million teens are affected by the debilitating condition. Most are undiagnosed and untreated, said the panel, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which sets guidelines for doctors on a host of health issues. The task force recommendations appear in April’s issue of the journal Pediatrics.

First overseas trip a test of leadership

President Barack Obama’s first European trip could dampen his hopes that a new diplomatic style will convert once-reluctant allies into cooperative global partners.

From taking in Guantanamo Bay prisoners to sending more troops into Afghanistan’s most difficult regions and spending their way out of economic crisis, European nations remain reticent about some of the toughest U.S. priorities. Obama jets across the Atlantic on Tuesday on an eight-day, five-country trip.

“This is a real test of his leadership,” said Reginald Dale, a Europe scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Statins may cut risk of blood clots

Statin drugs, taken by millions of Americans to lower cholesterol and prevent heart disease, also can cut the risk of developing dangerous blood clots that can lodge in the legs or lungs, a major study suggests. The results provide a new reason for many people with normal cholesterol to consider taking these medicines, sold as Crestor, Lipitor, Zocor and in generic form, doctors say. In the study, reported Sunday at an American College of Cardiology conference in Orlando, Fla., and published online by the New England Journal of Medicine, Crestor cut nearly in half the risk of blood clots in people with low cholesterol but high scores on a test for inflammation, which plays a role in many diseases.

Orchestra shut over peace concert

Authorities in the West Bank’s Jenin Palestinian refugee camp have shut down a youth orchestra and banned its conductor after she took 13 young musicians to perform for Holocaust survivors in Israel. Conductor Wafa Younes took the children from her Strings of Freedom orchestra to sing songs of peace last week as part of an annual Good Deeds Day. But once parents and leaders in Jenin realized where the group had been, they shut down the program, saying Younes had dragged the children into a political issue.

Summit welcomes war-crime suspect

Qatar gave Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir a red-carpet welcome Sunday as he arrived to attend a 22-nation Arab League summit in his most brazen act of defiance yet against an international arrest warrant on charges of war crimes in Darfur. Qatar —- a key U.S. ally that is home to American warplanes and more than 5,000 U.S. troops —- appeared to signal it would use the meeting beginning today to try to stake out a prominent role in regional affairs even at the risk of angering the West.

Court extends president’s term

Afghanistan’s Supreme Court ruled Sunday that President Hamid Karzai should remain in office until a new leader is chosen in a security-delayed Aug. 20 election, even though the country’s constitution says his term expires May 21. The ruling will leave at least a three-month gap between the end of Karzai’s term and the election. And because of vote-count delays and a possible election run-off, it could mean Karzai will remain in power into October —- a five-month extension opposition lawmakers have said they will not accept.

22 die, scores hurt in soccer panic

A stampede at a World Cup qualifying soccer match in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, killed at least 22 people and injured 132 Sunday, the Interior Ministry said. Fans pushing against each other to get in set off a panic that led to the stampede at the game between the Ivory Coast and Malawi.

COMING UP

> Tobacco users are facing a big hit as the single largest federal tobacco tax hike ever takes effect Wednesday.

> Central American leaders will push the U.S. to slow a flood of deportations when Vice President Joe Biden meets with them today in Costa Rica. The leaders want the U.S. to include Guatemalans in a temporary visa program that is already in place for Salvadorans, Hondurans and Nicaraguans. They also want the U.S. to soften a deportation policy that sent a record 80,000 people back to the region in 2008 alone.

> Cambodia opens its first genocide trial today. Prosecutors accuse Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, of crimes against humanity and war crimes, as well as torture and homicide, when he commanded the main Khmer Rouge prison, where as many as 16,000 men, women and children are believed to have been sent to their deaths after undergoing torture during the Khmer Rouge’s brutal 1975-79 rule.