POLITICAL UNREST: Air force employees were targeted in the second suicide bomb attack this week. Meanwhile, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto traveled to Dubai
A suicide bomber on a motorcycle rammed into a Pakistan Air Force bus yesterday, killing at least eight men and wounding about 40, officials said.

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PRESSING ON: UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari will return to Myanmar to promote talks between the government and opposition and to press for the release of those detained
Veteran Myanmar dissidents yesterday urged the ASEAN bloc of Southeast Asian nations to suspend the regime if its military rulers continue to refuse international demands for reform.

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Pakistan's Supreme Court yesterday handed suspended jail sentences to Islamabad's former police chief and four other officers for "manhandling" the country's top judge.

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Malaysia's Muslim men are suffering sleepless nights and cannot pray properly because their thoughts are distracted by a growing number of women who wear sexy clothes in public, a prominent cleric said.

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Two of the three Muslim militants on death row for involvement in the 2002 Bali bombings said they were sorry for killing fellow Muslims, while insisting their attack had gone according to plan.

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MONITORS: The UN secretary-general said events in recent months were `a sobering reminder' of the fragility of the peace deal, after a decree was extended to next year
The UN Security Council voted unanimously to extend the mandate of the UN force monitoring a 2005 peace deal that ended a 21-year civil war between Sudan's mostly Muslim north and the Christian and animist south.

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RECOMMENDATION: Scientists warn against excess body fat, which is a trigger for many kinds of cancers, while also warning against alcohol, lack of exercise and meat
A third of cancers are caused by diet and lack of exercise and could be prevented, according to a report which urges people to stay slim and abstain from too much fast food, red meat and preserved meat such as ham and bacon, and alcohol.

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The head of Russia's Central Elections Commission (CEC) yesterday rejected criticism from the West for reducing the number of foreign observers in parliamentary elections in December.

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SHOCK: Over three years after the incident, people affected by the Madrid attack described their feelings of utter disbelief after hearing the verdicts
Survivors and relatives of those killed were shocked by what many saw as the lenient sentences handed down in the Madrid bombing trial.

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Bertrande Allemand, a clown who entertains sick children in hospitals in rural France, describes herself as someone who wants to ease the suffering in the world. So when a friend told her about a French aid association planning to evacuate hundreds of Darfur orphans and place them with families in France, she went online and signed up.

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TRAGEDY: The tropical storm is the deadliest in this part of the Caribbean since Jeanne ripped through the region in 2004 and killed an estimated 3,000 people
Tropical Storm Noel triggered mudslides and floods in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, pushing the region's death toll to 81 and forcing some parents to choose which of their children to save from the surging waters.

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The joke is on US Vice President Dick Cheney. Apparently, around the White House, they have no problem with that.

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Career foreign service officers at the US State Department reacted angrily at a town hall meeting on Wednesday to the possibility that they might be forced to go to Iraq, putting senior Bush administration officials on the defensive.

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Hollywood writers and producers broke off contract talks without a new deal, allowing the Writers Guild of America's pact to expire at midnight on Wednesday and making a strike more likely.

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The construction of a large police barracks close to the Great Mosque of Samarra and its famed spiral minaret is imperiling another of Iraq's precious historical sites, UNESCO and senior archeologists have warned.

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'ROBBERY': The escort said that she was forced to have sex with three men at gunpoint, but the judge said she considered the case 'theft of services'
In a rare rebuke, a professional association for lawyers has criticized a judge for refusing to uphold sexual assault charges against a man accused of letting friends rape a prostitute he had hired.

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■ AUSTRALIA
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