NEW GREAT GAME: China, Russia and the US are all seeking advantage in the central Asian states -- with oil, military bases and economic incentives all in play
When Sergei Pashevich looks at the map of central Asia, he sees a chessboard on which a replay of the Great Game is unfolding, with oil, trade and the war on terrorism as the big global issues at stake.

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NUCLEAR TALKS: South Korea's president said the two countries should work together to make progress at the next round of talks at the end of this month
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun told a visiting North Korean delegation yesterday that the two countries should work together to resolve the issue of the North's nuclear development.

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Thousands of people were killed when the Boxing Day tsunami struck Sri Lanka because poachers had removed coral reefs that would have shielded the coastline from the worst of the waves.

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Dozens of small bomb blasts rattled the capital and towns across Bangladesh yesterday as a series of carefully timed attacks injured at least 42 people and sowed panic across the country, police said. Seven people were later arrested in connection with some of the bombings.

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IDEALS ON WHEELS: Two Americans are keeping a Web log about their travels and hope to raise awareness of human trafficking and the oppression of Asian women
The two young American men rolled up the dusty street on bicycles, stopping at the feminist-run labor rights center to earnestly deliver a message they have been pedaling across Southeast Asia to spread: "Real men support women."

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WITHDRAWAL: Soldiers and security forces were forced to drag diehard Jewish settlers from their homes in the Gaza Strip, but violence was `minimal'
Thousands of Israeli troops dragged sobbing Jewish settlers out of homes, synagogues and even a nursery school and hauled them onto buses in a massive evacuation, fulfilling Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's promise to end Israel's 38-year occupation of the Gaza Strip.

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A grief-stricken Cyprus started yesterday to bury the first of its air crash victims after a Cypriot plane plunged into a hillside outside Athens killing all 121 on board.

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POLITICS OF HUNGER: More than US$2 billion is needed immediately to save millions of people from starvation the UN says, and less than half of that has been supplied
To witness Africa's unrelenting hunger, look no further than into the fever-bright eyes of 17 severely malnourished infants languishing in a west African hospital.

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Venezuelan investigators picked through the shattered wreckage of a plane that crashed with 160 people on board, trying to determine what caused the engines to fail and sent the jet plunging from the sky in the country's deadliest air disaster in history.

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BOTCHED OPERATION: Leaked documents allege that police made a series of errors, and refute claims that a Brazilian man they shot dead had been acting suspiciously
Anti-terror police in London were under pressure yesterday after leaked documents revealed a catalogue of alleged errors that led to the shooting of a Brazilian man who was mistaken for a suicide bomber.

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LIONS AND ELEPHANTS: The proposal to help conserve endangered species by plopping them down on the US plains has generated criticism from other scientists
If a group of prominent ecologists have their way, lions and elephants could someday be roaming the Great Plains of North America.

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State Department analysts warned the Clinton administration in July 1996 that Osama bin Laden's move to Afghanistan would give him an even more dangerous haven as he sought to expand radical Islam "well beyond the Middle East," but the government chose not to deter the move, newly declassified documents show.

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An Afghan detainee who died in military custody was injured so severely that his leg muscles were split apart, an Air Force medical examiner testified in the trial of a soldier accused in the beating.

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■ Philippines
Cop kills three, himself
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