SCARED AWAY: Despite protests from rights groups and boycotts by some parties, Batticaloa held the first elections since the army took the city from rebels last year
Sri Lankans trickled to the polls yesterday in the turbulent eastern city of Batticaloa to vote in the first municipal elections since government forces took control of the east last year from ethnic Tamil rebels.

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A Canadian arrested last year in a worldwide manhunt after Interpol unscrambled his swirled digital images from Internet photos went on trial on Monday in Thailand, accused of sexually abusing a nine-year-old boy.

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South Korea said yesterday a female engineer would become the country's first person in space by going aboard a Russian spacecraft, after Moscow rejected Seoul's first choice because he violated reading rules at a training center.

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A Chinese man appeared on Monday in a New Zealand court charged with murdering his wife, in a case that sprang to global attention when he abandoned their young daughter at a railway station.

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ROADBLOCKS: Ibrahim Gambari was allowed to meet Aung San Suu Kyi a second time, but other plans for the trip met with opposition
The UN's special envoy to Myanmar met detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi yesterday for a second round of talks, but the junta has denied requests for him to meet its powerful leader.

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INDECISIVE VICTORY: With the Socialist Party estimated to win 169 seats in the 350-member assembly, it may have to forge an alliance with smaller parties to govern
Spain's ruling Socialists won a second term in elections on Sunday as voters brushed aside concerns over the slowing economy and soaring immigration and backed the party's liberal social reforms.

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As Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe heads into an election, a mother's desperation sums up the reality of 100,000 percent inflation.

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Representatives of central and eastern European countries were to meet UN officials yesterday to discuss how much redundant agricultural land could be brought back into use to alleviate the worldwide food shortage.

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For two years, Charles Taylor, the West African warlord and former president of Liberia, has been locked in a Dutch high-security jail, leaving the compound only for his war crimes trial.

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INFORMAL TRUCE: Ehud Olmert said the recent violence was aimed at derailing peace talks, but insisted Israel would not give up on its efforts to end the fighting
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has instructed the army to halt air strikes and raids into the Gaza Strip in response to a significant drop in rocket fire from the territory, officials in his office said yesterday.

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British members of parliament (MPs) and human rights groups on Sunday demanded an independent inquiry into the use of UK territory by CIA "torture flights" as fresh questions emerged over the British government's handling of the issue.

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This is the week Senator John McCain takes a measure of what the Republican nomination is worth.

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Talk of war has faded in the Andes in a matter of days, the product of a diplomatic truce between Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador that allowed the leaders of all three to avoid a protracted conflict while saving face.

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A female suicide bomber killed the head of a local security group northeast of Baghdad yesterday, the targeted leader's brother and provincial police said. A child and a security guard were also killed.

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FIRST ROUND: With prices up and buying confidence down, the left garnered 47 percent of the vote, while Sarkozy's UMP party and its allies had 45.5 percent
French voters have sent a warning to President Nicolas Sarkozy and his conservative government, favoring leftists in the first round of local elections that were seen as a test for his presidency and his reform agenda.

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■ EAST TIMOR

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