NOT-SO-FREE MEDIA: Police on Friday fired tear gas at staff and broke windows at the offices of Geo TV, sparking wide condemnation from Pakistani newspapers
Pakistani authorities have lifted restrictions on the country's suspended top judge, one of his lawyers said yesterday, a day after protesters and police clashed on the streets of the capital and in other cities.

[ FULL STORY ]

`WEIQUAN': Art instructor Zhang Zilin is part of a burgeoning movement of `rights defenders,' contributing in part through a Web-based network with 2,000 members
It started with a small protest over a twofold increase in bus fares in a village nestled in the hills of central China and escalated into a bloody clash between 20,000 farmers and police armed with batons.

[ FULL STORY ]

The chief defense lawyer for the long-delayed Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal said yesterday he would try to resolve a key sticking point over fees for foreign lawyers that threatens to derail the trials.

[ FULL STORY ]

Japanese police have identified at least three factories in North Korea that are suspected of manufacturing narcotics for the international black market, a news report said yesterday.

[ FULL STORY ]

LONDON: The man allegedly responsible for the explosive devices in the failed 2005 terrorist attacks on London said he was protesting `the plight of Muslims everywhere'
The man "principally responsible" for creating the explosive devices used in the failed "terrorist attacks" on London in the summer of 2005 defended his actions for the first time in public on Friday. Muktar Said Ibrahim, 29, the alleged bomber of the number 26 London bus on July 21 2005, took to the witness box at Woolwich crown court (south London) to explain that he made the devices in such a way that they would not explode.

[ FULL STORY ]

BATTLE: The latest tirade against Segolene Royal's troubled campaign to become France's first woman president came not from main rivals but from a former colleague
"Very dangerous for France," motivated purely by "her own glory" and proposing policies that will bring "economic catastrophes."

[ FULL STORY ]

Inhabitants of a small Czech village began voting yesterday in a local referendum on a US proposal to construct a radar forming part of its anti-missile defence system on a nearby army base.

[ FULL STORY ]

Life has become tougher for the paparazzi since their original incarnation chased celebrities on the screen in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita.

[ FULL STORY ]

A black box emitting a high pitched pulsing sound designed to deter loitering teenagers is being used in thousands of sites around Britain just a year after its launch, prompting warnings from civil liberties campaigners that it is a "sonic weapon" that could be illegal.

[ FULL STORY ]

GIVE PEACE A CHANCE: The war has grown increasingly unpopular with the US public, with polls showing a majority want the government to set a timetable for withdrawal
Thousands of people were expected to converge on the center of the US capital yesterday and march on the Pentagon as part of a series of demonstrations marking the fourth anniversary of the increasingly unpopular Iraq war, organizers said.

[ FULL STORY ]

After weeks of cooperation with a new security plan, radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr decried US forces as occupiers and called on his followers to "shout `No, No America!'" in a sign of resurgent anger and opposition.

[ FULL STORY ]

Mexico's attorney general said the US$206 million in cash seized from a luxury Mexico City house was connected to one of the hemisphere's largest networks for trafficking pseudoephedrine, the main ingredient in methamphetamines.

[ FULL STORY ]

BLAME GAME: Valerie Plame said that the White House had leaked her name to ruin her career and punish her husband for a critical opinion piece
A glamorous former CIA spy has accused the Bush administration of maliciously blowing her cover, in an Iraq war political scandal that has a top White House aide heading for jail.

[ FULL STORY ]

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva vetoed a measure on Friday that activists feared could worsen the plight of debt slaves in Latin America's largest nation.

[ FULL STORY ]

NEW CONSTITUTION: President Evo Morales has battled with several of the opposition's governors, and new polls could remove them from office
President Evo Morales said Bolivia could hold presidential elections as early as next year once an assembly finishes rewriting the Andean nation's constitution.

[ FULL STORY ]

■ Indonesia
Jakarta tackles bird flu
[ FULL STORY ]