STATE CONTROL: While Senior General Than Shwe committed to a transfer of power, he urged the military to `crush internal and external destructive elements'
Myanmar's junta chief insisted yesterday that he is not power hungry and intended to hand control of the government to the winners of elections in 2010.

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A charitable foundation set up by late Indonesian dictator Suharto was ordered yesterday to pay US$110 million to the government in a ruling on a civil case intended to claw back funds allegedly stolen from the state during his rule.

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Measures introduced by the Philippine government to curb human rights abuses are mere "window dressing," an official from Human Rights Watch (HRW) said yesterday.

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A 19-year-old woman has confessed to attempting to hijack and crash a Chinese passenger plane that had to be diverted earlier this month after suspicious liquid was found on board, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday.

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FIRST STOP WASHINGTON: Before his departure, Kevin Rudd outlined a reversal of his predecessor's policies on two areas involving the US -- the Kyoto Protocol and Iraq
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd departed yesterday on his first big overseas trip, armed with plans to make his country more active in global affairs and bearing bad news for US President George W. Bush on Iraq.

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`REDRESS': Tehran said it had answered all outstanding questions from the UN's atomic energy watchdog and said the US and other countries lied to the agency
Iran plans to take legal action and seek compensation for what it says are unlawful UN resolutions imposing sanctions on Tehran for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment, the foreign minister said in a letter obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday.

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French serial killer Michel Fourniret, who has confessed to going "virgin hunting" with his wife, was to go on trial yesterday for the murder of seven young women and girls.

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RAISING THE STAKES: France has some 1,600 soldiers deployed in Afghanistan, mainly in the capital, which is relatively peaceful compared with the volatile south
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Wednesday that France will boost its military presence in Afghanistan, a move welcomed by his allies in Britain and the US.

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Comoran government troops, now in control of the capital of Anjouan island, freed all the prisoners from the main jail in its capital on Wednesday to the cheers of local residents.

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WELCOME TO EUROPE: The find is challenging theories about when humans came to the continent. Anthropologists had previously believed the migration was much later
Anthropologists delving into a cave in northeastern Spain announced on Wednesday they had uncovered the earliest known remains of a human in Europe, a find that they dated to as much as 1.2 million years old.

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SENT IN: US military spokesman Major General Kevin Bergner said on Wednesday that 2,000 extra Iraqi security forces had been deployed to Basra for the operation
Heavy fighting erupted in a bastion of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's militia in Basra yesterday, witnesses said, as military operations against gunmen in the southern city entered a third day.

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A teenager charged in an alleged plot by homegrown terrorists to storm parliament and carry out other terror attacks in southern Ontario pleaded not guilty to belonging to a terrorist group, becoming the first suspect in the case to face trial.

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The worn parachute that children found while playing on their family's property in rural southwestern Washington this month may be the one that D.B. Cooper used on that mysterious night in 1971 when he carried out what the authorities call the only unsolved hijacking in US history.

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US President George W. Bush on Wednesday announced that he accepted an invitation from Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit Russia in April to discuss missile defense.

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A transgender man in Oregon says he is pregnant with a daughter, but when the baby is born, he will play father while his wife plays mother.

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■ CHINA

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