'BIG DAY': Parallel to denuclearization, Pyongyang appears to be striving to emerge from international isolation and has sent many top officials abroad in recent months
A team of US experts will begin disabling North Korea's nuclear facilities tomorrow, the top US envoy to nuclear disarmament talks with Pyongyang said, marking the biggest step the communist country has ever taken to scale back its atomic program.

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ALERT: While the Tigers mourned the death of six rebels, police and army troops tightened checks over fears of reprisals in government-held areas
The elusive leader of Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels yesterday paid his respects to his slain deputy and five others who died in a government air raid, as security was stepped up across the island.

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Former Philippine president Joseph Estrada visited one of Manila's poorest districts yesterday for the first time since he was ousted more than six years ago to thank his supporters a week after being pardoned for graft.

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Beijing Olympics organizers denied for the first time that special pig-breeding centers have been set up in secret to ensure that pork supplied to international athletes will be safe to eat.

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The top US military commander in the Pacific lamented China's absence at a meeting of Asia-Pacific military chiefs, saying the two dozen nations that attended were anxious to work with Beijing.

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A missile fired from an unmanned aerial drone killed five militants and wounded six people in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas on Friday, a Pakistani security official said.

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BORDER TROUBLE: Condoleezza Rice urged calm and cooperation between Ankara, Baghdad and Kurds in northern Iraq, but Turkey's foreign minister sounded impatient
Iraq warned that no one can stop Kurdish rebels in Iraq's remote northern border region from attacking Turkey, as tensions over the assaults overshadowed a major international meeting on Iraq's future.

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Dozens of Baghdadis flock to the center of the Iraqi capital on Friday mornings, ignoring the threat to their lives, with a sole aim -- to ease their loneliness in the company of a bird.

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Russia will set the date for presidential elections before the end of the month, the president of the upper house of parliament Sergei Mironov said in an interview with the newspaper Kommersant published yesterday.

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel made her first visit to Afghanistan yesterday and is expected to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai and visit some of the 3,000 German troops stationed in the country.

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British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's party is still trailing in the polls and 80 percent of Britons think his government is being dishonest about immigration, surveys showed yesterday.

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FIRST VISIT: The chief of the UN also called for 'crucial support' from other countries after rebels made an historic visit to the capital city
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed hope that the first visit to Kampala, Uganda's capital, by delegates from the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) will create the momentum needed to settle the brutal conflict between the government and the notorious rebel group.

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SWEET DEAL: Polls show many Venezuelans oppose centralizing presidential power but favor benefits included in the package, such as reducing the work day to six hours
The Venezuelan National Assembly approved a constitutional overhaul on Friday that would enhance President Hugo Chavez's authority, allowing him to be re-elected indefinitely and giving him the power to handpick vice presidents for various new regions to be created in the country.

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RIGHTS ADVOCATE: Bolivia will be the first to ratify the UN declaration on the rights of native peoples, which the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand voted against
In a new feature film about his journey from dirt-poor sheep herder to Bolivian president, Evo Morales is portrayed being beaten unconscious by anti-narcotics police and found the next day by fellow coca union leaders.

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The astronaut chosen to make emergency repairs yesterday on the space station's ripped solar wing -- a dangerous and unprecedented electrical job -- is actually an emergency medical doctor and mountaineer whose specialty at NASA just happens to be spacewalks.

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A Democratic senator yesterday accused US President George W. Bush of "hollow talk" in support of US troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and said the Bush administration has not done nearly enough to provide veterans with the care they need.

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A Canadian facing charges of child sex crimes against young boys in Thailand will remain in jail here until Thursday, a court decided on Friday.

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More than 100 Sri Lankan UN peacekeepers accused of sexual exploitation and abuse in Haiti could face hard labor if found guilty, the military said yesterday, but said an inquiry was needed first.

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■ Floods kill 18 people
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