SCARE TACTICS: Special elections yesterday came after a failed May 14 poll, when election inspectors refused to man their posts because of threats from political clans
Three people, including a soldier, were wounded as special balloting opened yesterday in 13 Muslim towns in the southern Philippines amid blasts and gunfire, a police general said.

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A Hong Kong printer that publishes financial reports for prominent Chinese companies suddenly dropped a book that discusses the 1989 pro-democracy protests at Beijing's Tiananmen Square, in an apparent act of self-censorship, the book's author said yesterday.

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SEARCH: Authorities declined to speculate on who was behind the blast near a military convoy, but said security forces hoped to trace and arrest the culprits
A roadside bomb exploded near a military convoy in troubled northwestern Pakistan yesterday, killing at least two soldiers and wounding seven others, officials said.

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North Korea may soon test-fire another missile, a news report said yesterday, a day after the communist nation launched at least one short-range missile into coastal waters.

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SUCCESS: Prime Minister Ahern said his only goal now was `to command a stable government for a five-year term,' which could also mean forging new alliances
Prime Minister Bertie Ahern's long-dominant Fianna Fail party marched toward its sixth straight election victory on Saturday after voters stuck with a popular leader who has presided over unprecedented economic success.

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Ankara is not getting enough support from the US in its fight against Kurdish rebels operating from bases in northern Iraq, Turkey's foreign minister said on Friday.

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EVIDENCE: Russian Prosecutor-General Yuri Chaika said he had told a British official that Lugovoy would be tried in Russia if London could supply enough proof of his guilt
Moscow and London locked horns on Friday over where to try the chief suspect in the murder of Russian former spy Alexander Litvinenko, with each side insisting justice should be served on its own soil.

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Gunmen kidnapped nine foreign oil workers and a Nigerian colleague from a ship off the coast of Nigeria on Friday, police said, bringing the total number of foreign hostages in the country to 25.

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At least 140 people in London were contaminated with radioactivity as a result of the assassination of the former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko last November, according to government health advisers.

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DIFFERENT VIEW: Democrats meanwhile used former marine Elliot Anderson in their address, who said patriotism is an American value, not a Democratic or Republican one
US President George W. Bush urged Americans to use tomorrow's Memorial Day holiday to rededicate themselves to fighting for freedom around the world and pray for the safety of US troops serving overseas.

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Jamil el-Banna has been locked up by the US for nearly five years without being charged -- arrested in Africa, allegedly tortured at a CIA "black site" in Afghanistan, then held at Guantanamo Bay -- all because of faulty British intelligence, his defenders charge.

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A special US prosecutor has asked for former top White House aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby, convicted in a politically-charged CIA leak case, to be jailed for up to three years.

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COURT ORDER: President Hugo Chavez rejected allegations that he is threatening freedom of expression, accusing RCTV of supporting a failed 2002 coup d'etat
Venezuela's Supreme Court ruled that broadcasting equipment and infrastructure used by a television channel critical of leftist President Hugo Chavez must be made available to the state-run TV channel that will replace it.

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FAULTY DEVICE: Authorities maintain that the pilots should have noticed that the plane was not transmitting a signal with its location
A prosecutor on Friday sought formal charges against two US pilots and four Brazilian air traffic controllers involved in the South American country's worst-ever air disaster, which left 154 people dead.

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■ CHINA
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