Sri Lanka celebrated its 60th independence anniversary yesterday with parades, speeches and an intense security clampdown aimed at halting a growing wave of attacks blamed on separatist rebels that have killed scores of civilians across the country.

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JUSTICE BEFORE DEATH? : The tribunal of Pol Pot's No. 2 was put on hold while his lawyer obtained certification. Some fear he'll die before it's finished
Cambodia's genocide tribunal postponed Khmer Rouge leader Nuon Chea's first public court hearing yesterday amid a row over his legal team, raising concerns for further delays to the UN-backed proceedings.

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Soldiers clashed with militants linked to al-Qaeda in the southern Philippines yesterday, leaving three rebels and two soldiers dead just days after a top Indonesian terror suspect eluded a military raid on a nearby island, an official said.

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BACK ON TRACK: Railway service was returning to normal, but more cold weather was predicted as people crowded onto trains to go home for the holiday
China's main north-south national freeway reopened yesterday after weeks of snow and ice storms that throttled transport and disrupted supplies of food and fuel during the country's peak holiday season.

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'EMBRACING MARTYRDOM': The army confirmed that four personnel were killed in the latest installment of violence ahead of elections scheduled later this month
A suicide attacker rammed a bomb-laden motorbike into a Pakistani army bus taking medical staff to work yesterday in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, killing five people, police said.

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JUST ONE A WEEK: A spokeswoman said it was clear the Taliban was successfully being contained, as 75 percent of the country suffered only one violent incident a week
NATO says the Taliban insurgency is not spreading in Afghanistan and that 70 percent of the violence last year occurred in only 10 percent of the country, in contrast to more pessimistic assessments.

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Afghan Foreign Minister Dadfar Spanta was in Japan yesterday for talks ahead of an international meeting to help the war-torn nation rebuild itself.

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South Korea's defense ministry intends to revive a joint US-South Korean contingency plan to cope with unrest in North Korea after president-elect Lee Myung-bak takes office, a report said yesterday.

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South Korean prosecutors trying to recover a former president's multimillion-dollar slush fund said they have charged a nephew with embezzling part of it.

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'INTERVENTION': Paris accused Sudan of wanting to crush Deby's regime before the arrival of EU peacekeeping forces, a charge that Sudan denied
Chadian rebels said yesterday they withdrew voluntarily from Chad's capital overnight, but it was unclear if they succumbed to the force of helicopter gunships and tanks deployed by government forces.

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From blaring car horns to wedding parties, rising noise pollution in the 24-hour metropolis of Cairo has reached alarming levels, leading to hearing problems, irritability and even death.

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Newly declassified British documents provide a glimpse into heated Cabinet discussions on Iraq, Israel-Arab relations, protecting the environment and a secret deal on when the prime minister would step aside for his ambitious No. 2.

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TROOP COMMITMENT: A committee warned that pressure to meet pledges in Afghanistan and Iraq had battered morale and spurred officers to leave
The strength of the British Army has been markedly depleted by sickness and injury, the Daily Telegraph reported yesterday.

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The US military said yesterday it had accidentally killed nine Iraqi civilians during an operation targeting al-Qaeda in Iraq south of Baghdad.

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SHOWDOWN: While Republican McCain may pull out a decisive lead, the Democratic Party's system of proportionally allocating delegates means the race could drag on
Exhausted White House hopefuls yesterday launch one last frenzied day of campaigning before 24-state "Super Tuesday" the biggest one-day White House nominating contest in history.

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CARNALITY: The event is a competition between the city's top 12 samba schools, each of which are judged on things like the allegories represented by their floats
Gargantuan animal effigies and honed dancers wearing nothing but a bit of glitter between their legs turned Rio into a fantasy land overnight, as the city's world-famous carnival parades got underway.

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A number of studies showing that circumcision among men reduces their risk of infection with the AIDS virus has raised the hope that the procedure would also benefit their female sexual partners.

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As police continued to search for a gunman who killed five women at a suburban Chicago mall, passers-by erected a memorial of five white crosses and flowers to the victims.

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Federal investigators began searching over the weekend for remains of victims of Mexico's "dirty war," which led to the disappearance of hundreds of dissidents in the 1960s and 1970s.

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■ MALAYSIA

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