‘NOT TALIBAN’: The Khost governor says the security personnel that were killed were not militants, and were working for a road construction company for US$250 a day
Fourteen Afghan security guards were killed in a clash with US-led troops, a provincial governor said yesterday, but the military said that they were suspected militants who fired first.

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New Zealand prime minister-elect John Key held talks with minor party allies yesterday as he bids to form a government within a week to help tackle the fallout of the global economic crisis.

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Myanmar removed natural-gas exploration equipment from a zone in the Bay of Bengal claimed by Bangladesh, defusing a weeklong dispute between the neighbors.

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MODERATE MAJORITY: The head of the country’s top Islamic body said that the bombers could not be considered martyrs as they were not fighting for religion
Indonesian security forces were on high alert yesterday after the execution of three Islamists over the 2002 Bali bombings amid fears of a violent extremist backlash, police said.

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This week marks 90 years since the end of World War I, surely the last major anniversary for its handful of aging veterans as what was dubbed the “War to End All Wars” slips from memory into history.

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The Sri Lankan government has rejected an offer by Tamil rebels for a ceasefire in the northern part of the country where fighting continues as troops push forward to recapture rebel-held areas, a local newspaper said yesterday.

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Authorities in Thailand will press for the extradition of ousted Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra no matter where he goes to live, officials said yesterday after the UK revoked the exiled leader’s visa.

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DISPUTE: An Israeli human rights group warned that enforcing pre-1948 property claims could boomerang on Israelis living in homes abandoned by Palestinians
Israeli police on Sunday evicted a disabled Palestinian man and his wife from the Jerusalem home in which they have lived for more than 50 years, despite the intervention of the US.

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PEACEKEEPING: The SADC pledged assistance to the Congo’s armed forces and called for the creation of a humanitarian corridor as thousands fled their homes
Fighting between rebels and pro-government forces opened up a new front in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), as southern African nations said they were ready to send in peacekeepers.

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Egyptian authorities denied entry to one of Osama bin Laden’s sons and put him on a plane to Qatar on Sunday, becoming the third nation to reject the self-proclaimed “ambassador for peace,” an airport security official said.

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Miriam Makeba, the singer who became the musical symbol of the black struggle against apartheid, has died after collapsing at a concert in Italy. She was 76.

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A Russian expert said on Sunday that a lack of gas masks among too many untrained civilians may have elevated the death toll in a Sea of Japan nuclear submarine gas poisoning disaster, a news agency reported.

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African leaders urged Zimbabwe’s rival political factions to share control of the police ministry in an effort to form a unity government, but Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s main opponent rejected the proposal early yesterday.

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HYBRID SYSTEM: A legal adviser to Barack Obama says the administration would look to the civilian and military court-martial systems to create the new structure
US president-elect Barack Obama’s advisers are quietly crafting a proposal to ship dozens, if not hundreds, of imprisoned terrorism suspects to the US to face criminal trials, a plan that would make good on his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison but could require creation of a controversial new system of justice.

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GIRL BOMBERS: Many of the female bombers have lost male relatives and are seen as psychologically vulnerable to recruitment for suicide missions
At least 28 people were killed and 68 wounded, including women and children, and dozens wounded in a triple bombing in a Baghdad market yesterday, the deadliest attack to rock the Iraqi capital in months, security officials said.

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US special forces have conducted about a dozen secret operations against al-Qaeda and other Islamic militants in Pakistan, Syria and other countries under broad war-waging authority given them by the administration of US President George W. Bush, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

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Hurricane Paloma leveled hundreds of homes along Cuba’s southern coast before rapidly losing steam over land on Sunday, weakening from a dangerous Category 4 storm into a tropical depression in less than a day.

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Magnetic interference from iPod headphones could pose a risk to patients with surgically implanted heart monitoring devices, a study involving 60 pacemaker and defibrillator patients showed.

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■CAMBODIA

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