FREEDOM IN PIECES: Myanmar has released supporters of the pro-democracy icon who were arrested last month as they marched to her house demanding her freedom
Myanmar's pro-democracy party said yesterday that the ongoing house arrest of its leader Aung San Suu Kyi was illegal, and demanded the ruling junta accept an appeal against her detention.

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'GOOD BOY': More details were published about the killer's metamorphosis from award-winning tennis player to friendless worker in a factory outside Tokyo
The suspect in a knifing rampage that left seven dead in Tokyo was handed to prosecutors yesterday, as media reports pulling together Internet postings and police statements drew a picture of an angry, lonely young man who meticulously planned the deadly attack.

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All efforts are under way to find three members of a Manila television team missing in the southern Philippines, the journalists’ TV network said yesterday.

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RECONSTRUCTION AGENDA: The Afghanistan National Development Strategy is counting the development of security, infrastructure and agriculture among its goals
The World Bank yesterday said war-torn Afghanistan needs to build a more effective state to promote economic development and urged the international community to help in the process.

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Pakistani Premier Yousuf Raza Gilani said the government would freeze defense spending in the upcoming budget, state media reported yesterday, as the country tries to tackle growing economic problems.

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A US helicopter on a humanitarian mission in the Philippines was apparently shot at, prompting the Navy to temporarily halt the mission, a defense official said.

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DISCORD: Washington admitted it might not be able to wrap up a complex security accord before Bush’s term expires given the strong opposition at home and in Iraq
The administration of US President George W. Bush is conceding for the first time that Washington may not finish a complex security agreement with Iraq before Bush leaves office.

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The days are numbered for a Little Vietnam on the banks of a river in southwestern France that for 50 years has housed widows and children of French soldiers who died in Indochina. After half a century of neglect by the French state, the Center for the Reception of the French of Indochina is to be demolished and its residents rehoused.

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The Somali government and its main political foes signed a three-month cessation of hostilities accord at UN-sponsored peace talks in Djibouti on Monday, a UN spokeswoman said.

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ATTACKS: Top security and administrative officials are holding talks to discuss the two options to stop the near-daily assaults by Hamas on its territory
Israel's top leadership was to debate yesterday whether to pursue a truce with Hamas' Gaza rulers, or embark on a broad military operation to stop the stream of rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian militants on southern Israel.

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VOTER ANXIETY: A weak economy has replaced the Iraq War as the big concern, as AFL-CIO members planned to target Bush and McCain at gas stations nationwide
Democratic Senator Barack Obama seized on record gas prices and a spike in US job losses as he focused on the ailing US economy, trying to link Republican rival Senator John McCain to the faltering economic policies of unpopular President George W. Bush.

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Thousands of people marched on the US embassy on Monday to demand that Washington extradite a former Bolivian defense minister who directed a military crackdown on riots that killed at least 60 people in 2003.

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EDUCATION: The success of many Asian-Americans in earning bachelor's degrees is hiding many academic trouble spots and imposes a burden on the youngsters
With their high visibility on elite college campuses, Asian Americans have picked up a nickname that makes many uncomfortable: the "model minority."

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Colombia's army has located three US nationals in the hands of Marxist rebels, but has not attempted a rescue, Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said on Monday.

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Chief Phil Fontaine was ripped from his family at age six in 1951 and while his mother wept, was forcibly enrolled in a boarding school set up to assimilate Canada's indigenous peoples.

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