ISOLATED: Jemaah Islamiyah has pulled off devastating attacks on 'soft targets,' but anti-terror experts say internal divisions and fund shortages are forcing it to aim higher
An al-Qaeda-linked group that staged the deadliest post-Sept. 11 terror bombing is shifting tactics and believed to be planning assassinations of Western and regional leaders in Asia, moving away from large-scale strikes against civilian targets, officials said.

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OCTOBER ELECTION: The defense minister pledged to refrain from violence in the run-up to the vote as he announced he would support the education minister
Afghanistan's powerful defense minister is backing a rival to President Hamid Karzai in the country's coming elections, and has insisted he will not use violence to try to hang on to office, while the US military warned of more attacks leading up to the poll after aid workers were killed in a shooting.

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DISASTER: The number of people killed from the flooding is still rising and despite receding waters in some areas, unsanitary conditions mean disease is spreading
The death toll from monsoon flooding in India stood at more than 1,000 yesterday with reports of more than 165 people killed in recent days by rains that also destroyed crops, flooded highways and halted trains across South Asia.

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The Pacific island nation of Nauru -- once rich with phosphates derived from bird droppings but now in financial ruins -- is appealing for help from 15 other regional states at an islands forum in Samoa over the coming three days, officials said yesterday.

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Fiji's High Court convicted the vice president yesterday for his role in a 2000 nationalist coup that ousted the first ethnic Indian prime minister in this South Pacific islands nation.

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POPULATION POLITICS: Thousands of new settlers near Jerusalem are critical for Israel to counter high Arab population growth as Jews leave the holy city
Israel is planning to build thou-sands of housing units in the West Bank settlement of Maaleh Adumim in an attempt to connect the community to Jerusalem, Israeli officials said yesterday.

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Legendary photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who traveled the world for more than a half-century capturing human drama with his camera, has died, the French Cul-ture Ministry said. He was 95.

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ADD BUBBLES: The water agency has been told to use hydrogen peroxide to aerate the river, helping microbes multiply to digest the untreated sewage and dead fish
British environment authorities mounted a major cleanup operation on Wednesday after flooding forced hundreds of thousands of tonnes of raw sewage into the River Thames running through central London.

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They are as much a part of Paris life as crottes de chien on the pavement, but their numbers are dwindling and the fate awaiting many is causing concern.

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An international forensic team examined the charred interior of a Paraguayan supermarket to determine the cause of a weekend blaze that killed more than 400 people, many of whom were trapped inside by locked doors.

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SANCTIONS PROPOSED: The ruling party organized a demonstration of 100,000 people, accusing foreign nations of trying to get at Sudan's natural resources
More than 100,000 people staged a state-organized protest against a UN Security Council resolution giving Sudan 30 days to stop Arab militia violence in the western region of Darfur or face economic and diplomatic penalties.

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A WAY OUT: Some hope to get jobs abroad or go on pilgrimages, but many just feel a passport would offer an escape route if security were to collapse altogether
Mohamad Ghiath and his wife Yusir were outside the passport office at 5:30am, long before the sun was up. Both are doctors, and, with a small daughter to raise, the thing they most want is to get out of Iraq.

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A bill to end an array of Soviet-era benefits for the elderly and disabled, including free transportation and medicine, was approved by the lower house of Russia's parliament yesterday, making the measure almost certain to become law.

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Norwegian scientists said yesterday they may have found several new species of marine life, including previously unknown fish and squids, after scouring the deep waters of the Atlantic Ocean in one of the most extensive marine expeditions in history.

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`INHUMAN TREATMENT': The organization said the questioning of three British prisoners at the camp in Cuba amounted to torture
Repeated abuses allegedly suffered by three British prisoners at the hands of US interrogators and guards in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba could amount to war crimes, the Red Cross said on Wednesday.

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■ China
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