INNOCENT LIVES: About 2,000 students blocked the highway from Kabul to Pakistan to protest the second killing of civilians by coalition forces in less than two months
Afghans protested for a fourth day yesterday over the killing of civilians by US-led coalition forces hunting Taliban, adding to pressure on Western-backed Afghan President Hamid Karzai amid rising violence.

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BLAME GAME: Talks have been stalled by China, India and Brazil's insistence that industrialized nations assume responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions
A demand by China, India and Brazil that rich nations accept that they are mainly responsible for global warming has held up progress at a key UN climate change conference here, delegates said yesterday.

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Pakistani lawyers and opposition workers chanting slogans against President Pervez Musharraf rallied in Islamabad yesterday as the country's suspended chief justice appeared before a judicial council.

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Australian Prime Minister John Howard yesterday strongly defended US President George W. Bush's veto of a law setting out a timeline for withdrawing US troops from Iraq.

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Seema Parihar was once one of northern India's most feared bandits. Now she wants to be a member of parliament.

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Red-faced British officials in Hong Kong were trying to find stone masons yesterday after crude repairs to crumbling colonial-era war graves left the stones with howling spelling errors.

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Hundreds of Chinese workers demanding overtime pay went on strike at one of the world's busiest ports, holding up thousands of shipping containers at the terminal in southern China, Hong Kong newspapers reported yesterday.

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WORKERS: From Iran to Chile to South Korea, people in towns and cities demanded better pay and conditions from their governments, while highlighting inequities
Violent clashes marred huge May Day rallies around the world on Tuesday, as Fidel Castro failed to show up for Cuba's celebrations.

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Withering criticism of his running of last year's war in Lebanon and demands for his resignation were wearing down Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who dozed off in public while trying to maintain a facade of determination to correct what went wrong.

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RESPONSE: The prime minister called for a constitutional amendment to allow a popular vote for the president, as fears escalate over Islamic rule
Turkey's highest court halted a parliamentary vote that looked certain to lead to a president rooted in political Islam, a victory for secularists who fear the country is moving toward Islamic rule that would undermine their Western way of life.

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The International Criminal Court issued its first arrest warrants yesterday in the murderous Darfur conflict, seeking to try a government minister and a Janjaweed militia leader on charges of mass slayings, rape and torture. Sudan, though, refused to arrest them.

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CLASH: The US president said setting a deadline for withdrawal amounted to setting a deadline for failure and that politicians' views should not overrule military strategy
US President George W. Bush on Tuesday vetoed a bill setting an Iraq withdrawal timeline, setting the stage for a new battle with anti-war forces over ending US involvement in the four-year-old conflict.

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MEGA-MILE-HIGH CLUB: With the dawn of deep space exploration, the US space agency is having to consider its stance on issues such as sex in space
How do you get rid of a dead astronaut's body on a three-year mission to Mars and back?

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MAY DAY: The rallies in Los Angeles were much smaller than last year's, with some analysts saying workers feared repercussions, but police still clashed with protesters
More than 200,000 activists rallied across the US on Tuesday, demanding an overhaul of immigration laws and greater rights for the country's estimated 12 million illegal workers.

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US and Iraqi officials chased reports that the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq was killed by rivals north of Baghdad. But US authorities urged caution and warned that even if the claim were true, the death of the shadowy Abu Ayyub al-Masri would not spell the end of the terror movement in Iraq.

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Twelve people, including eight children, were taken to hospitals on Tuesday after a school bus was struck by a stolen sport utility vehicle (SUV) that the police were chasing in Queens, New York.

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■ SOUTH KOREA
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