BOOMING BUSINESS: Although illegal, homemade firearms are ignored by police and used by political officials in an industry more lucrative than farming or fishing
Ronberto Garcia picks up a freshly-made, well-oiled automatic sub-machine gun from a formica table under a huge gazebo and screws on a long silencer.

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Prime Minister John Howard apologized yesterday to a mentally-ill Australian woman who was wrongly deported to the Philippines under the conservative government's strict immigration laws, leaving a nine-year-old son in foster care.

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US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said yesterday that Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Khai will meet President George W. Bush on June 21 during the Vietnamese leader's historic trip to the US.

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NARROW VICTORY: After a close election, Britain's prime minister has won a historic third term but will also have to contend with calls for him to step aside
British Prime Minister Tony Blair will have to overcome a newly influential leftwing in the Commons as he battles to legislate for identity cards, welfare reform and tightening of asylum laws, as he returned to power yesterday with a reduced majority.

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The Fatah movement of the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas captured a clear majority of the more than 80 towns and villages that staged local elections, beating back a strong challenge by the Islamic movement Hamas, an election official said yesterday morning.

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Despondent Labour figures were Thursday night struggling with the paradox of a historic third term and the possibility of their leader, Tony Blair, being pressed to stand down sooner rather than later.

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US President George W. Bush faces tricky diplomatic terrain during a whirlwind European tour that takes him from a solemn remembrance at an American veterans cemetery in the Netherlands to a boisterous World War II victory celebration in Moscow's Red Square. It's the rare presidential foreign trip with a single theme: democracy's onward march, past and present.

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FROM SCRATCH: The mistrial that was called on Wednesday is not the end of the matter; the soldier will now face a new investigation into the abuse at Abu Ghraib
The US government will file new charges soon against Private First Class Lynndie England, whose guilty plea was thrown out and her court martial canceled on Wednesday over testimony by the convicted ringleader in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, an Army defense lawyer said on Thursday.

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MAYHEM: Saddam Hussein's home town remains as deadly as ever after a car bomb killed at least eight police; in Baghdad, 12 bodies were found at a dump
In another attack targeting Iraqi security forces, a suicide car bomb destroyed a police minibus at a checkpoint in former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's hometown yesterday, killing at least eight policemen, officials said.

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The US army has offered its last word on holding its generals accountable in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, but Congress is going to have the final say.

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Michael Jackson's defense at his child-sex trial got off to an explosive start on Thursday as two Australians emphatically denied claims they were molested by the singer over a decade ago.

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GLIMMER OF HOPE: Ciudad Juarez is notorious for hundreds of unsolved murders of young women, but at least one case may now result in a conviction
A woman who was raped, beaten and left for dead on Thursday outside Ciudad Juarez -- infamous for more than a decade of largely unsolved slayings against women -- survived and identified her attackers.

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