GOING NOWHERE: Xinhua news agency said 12 national highways across six provinces remained impassable because of ice, while snow-clearing equipment was inadequate
Train service was restored yesterday in southern China, thinning the massive crowds waiting to go home after the worst winter storms in half a century hit during the nation's busiest holiday travel season.

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Military-run Myanmar's latest round of talks with detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi were a sham aimed only at easing global pressure on the regime, analysts said yesterday.

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SPEAKING OUT: An aide said a letter written by the former chief justice, who is isolated in his house, had been smuggled past guards by his daughter
NY Times News Service and AFP, ISLAMABAD AND LAHORE, PAKISTAN

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The Australian government's plan to apologize to Aborigines for past injustices ran into trouble yesterday when the opposition indicated it might not support the move.

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South Korean president-elect Lee Myung-bak is facing a rebellion in his party that could set back his plans for economic reform, with members saying yesterday they might break away because of a dispute over nominees for an April vote.

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GUNNED DOWN: An opposition lawmaker was shot and killed by a police officer yesterday in what Kenya's national police chief described as `a crime of passion'
Negotiators for Kenya's political rivals met for the first time yesterday, as Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki attended an African Union summit in neighboring Ethiopia set to be dominated by the month-long crisis sparked by his reelection.

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A small but significant percentage of the main influenza virus causing illness this winter in Europe, Canada and the US has a mutation that makes it resistant to the anti-influenza drug Tamiflu, the WHO said on Wednesday.

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DIGGING FOR FREEDOM: World War II RAF pilot Jimmy James helped fellow POWs dig a 30m escape tunnel out of Stalag Luft III using a table knife
Jimmy James, a British flier in World War II obsessed with escape plots during his five years in German captivity, most prominently the breakout portrayed in the movie The Great Escape, died on Jan. 18 in Shrewsbury, England. He was 92.

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The chief of Iran's judiciary moved to curb the increasingly common spectacle of public executions on Wednesday by banning the practice, except in cases approved by him.

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An explosion at a factory building in Istanbul killed 17 people and injured 68 others yesterday, authorities said. Rescue workers searched the rubble for any survivors.

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THINNING THE FIELD: The race for the White House, until Tuesday thought to be unusually close, is now seen as a couple of two-horse races
Senator John McCain has taken pole position in the Republican White House race, having secured Rudolph Giuliani's endorsement and with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger poised to follow suit.

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Delegates met behind closed doors for a two-day global climate change conference in Hawaii, but were not expected to make major progress on setting limits for greenhouse gases.

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Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' steadfast refusal on Wednesday to have any dealings with Hamas, despite pressure for a compromise solution to resolve the border crisis, has left the radical movement scrambling for some other way to maintain its influence on the frontier.

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Last week, Canadians discovered, courtesy of an obscure trial in Texas, that "Canadian" does not always mean what they think it does.

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■ CANDA

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