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Opponents of the Thai prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, vowed Sunday not to end their protests until he resigns, as police warned of possible violence at demonstrations expected to draw tens of thousands of people.
   ‘We will camp there until we get the answer from Thaksin,’ Suriyasai Katasila, spokesman for the anti-Thaksin People’s Alliance for Democracy, said.
   ‘If the police don’t allow us to stay at the venue, we have the right to disobey their orders,’ he warned.
   Tens of thousands of people are expected to join the protest from 4:00pm (0900 GMT), with 5,000 police on hand and another 5,000 on alert.
   Political tensions ran high in Bangkok this weekend as Thaksin and his rivals staged duelling mass rallies just two days apart in the same Sanam Luang field near the royal palace.
   Organisers of the rally Sunday said they planned to march from Sanam Luang to Democracy Monument about one kilometre away, where Suriyasai said they would camp for days if necessary until Thaksin steps down.
   ‘The chance of violence is highly likely and we would prefer for people to stay at home,’ said national police spokesman Ajirawid Subarnbhesaj. Police estimated some 50,000 people would attend the rally.
   ‘It is very difficult to prevent violence at a protest where a huge number of people is gathered, especially when they move from one place to another,’ he said.
   Thaksin drew some 150,000 people late Friday as he kicked off his campaign for snap elections on April 2, and on Saturday he called for national unity and urged all protesters to remain peaceful.
   Thaksin, who faces allegations of corruption and abuse of power, told his rally that he would refuse to take office if he takes less than half the vote, and vowed constitutional changes and new elections in about one year if he wins.
   But PAD rejected his latest offer of political reforms Saturday and vowed to stage demonstrations until the premier steps down.
   ‘Our stance is that the constitutional changes and political reforms offered by Thaksin were only an empty promise so that Thaksin could try to stay in power,’ Suriyasai said.
   After a month of street protests demanding his resignation, Thaksin abruptly dissolved parliament on February 24 and called a general election three years ahead of schedule, in a bid to defuse the crisis.
   But the country’s main opposition Democrat Party and two other parties said they would boycott the polls, which analysts said would threaten their legitimacy and potentially throw the kingdom deeper into political turmoil.
   Thaksin again called on the opposition parties at the Friday rally to join elections and said he would even accept a postponement of the election if they needed more time to find candidates.
   Thaksin won his second term in office last year with an absolute majority in parliament, an historic victory that made him appear invincible.
   But simmering discontent bubbled over in January when his family sold their shares in Shin Corp, the telecoms giant Thaksin founded before entering politics, for 1.9 billion dollars, tax free.
   Anger at the deal, mostly among Bangkok’s urban middle classes, has turned into weekly street protests since February 4, drawing tens of thousands of people demanding his resignation.

Islamist militant group Hamas rejected Russian appeals for it to recognise Israel or disband its armed wing, senior leaders of the group said on Saturday.
   The Moscow visit is the first to a major foreign power by leaders of Hamas, who are forming a new Palestinian government following a landslide win in the January 25 parliamentary elections.
   Hamas is hoping to gain a measure of international standing from the three days of talks, opposed by Israel and the United States.
   The Hamas charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. Both the United States and the European Union have branded Hamas a terrorist organisation. But it is popular among Palestinians for charitable works and has a reputation for freedom from corruption.
   Hamas deputy political leader Moussa Abu Marzouk said in an interview that recognising Israel would negate all Palestinian rights.
   ‘It means a negation of the Palestinian people and their rights and their property, of Jerusalem and the holy sites, as well as negation of their right of return. Therefore the recognition of Israel is not on the agenda,’ Abu Marzouk said.
   ‘We believe that Israel has no right to exist,’ he added later in remarks to an Arab audience. ‘Hamas will never take such a step.’
   Meanwhile, Hamas admitted it would have to ‘change its manners’ now that it was the elected representative of the Palestinian people and said it viewed its landmark visit to Russia wrapping up Sunday as a first step in that direction.
   Senior Hamas leaders however maintained their uncompromising line on Israel, saying any softening of the organisation’s positions would come about only with strictly reciprocal change in Israel’s policies in dealing with the Palestinians.
   ‘We don’t say ‘no’ to everything,’ Mohammed Nazzal, a senior Hamas political figure accompanying Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal to Moscow, said ahead of the delegation’s meeting with Patriarch Alexei II, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, the group’s last formal event in Moscow.
   ‘We know that we are in a new phase, a new stage’ following Hamas’ shock victory in the January 25 Palestinian elections, he said.

The US president, George W Bush, told the Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf, on Saturday he opposed giving Pakistan the same kind of nuclear agreement just reached with arch rival India.
   Bush told a joint news conference that he and Musharraf discussed the issue in their private talks and ‘I explained that Pakistan and India are different countries with different needs and different histories.’
   The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, said Pakistan had expressed an interest in a deal like the one between
   the United States and India but that ‘it’s not the right time for that.’
   The India deal, announced on Thursday, marks a breakthrough for New Delhi, long treated as a nuclear pariah by the world, allowing it to access US atomic technology and fuel to meet its soaring energy needs. The agreement needs approval by the US Congress.
   Under the deal, India agreed to separate its military and civilian nuclear plants and open the latter to international inspections.
   For 30 years, the United States led the effort to deny India nuclear technology because New Delhi tested and developed nuclear weapons in contravention of international norms.
   Neither India nor its nuclear-armed neighbour Pakistan has signed the international nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
   Pakistan watched the US-India agreement with interest.
   US officials have said Washington will not conclude a similar deal with Pakistan, which is under a cloud because of the role of its top atom scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, in a nuclear proliferation scandal.

China will ‘uncompromisingly’ oppose any moves towards independence by the Taiwan premier, Wen Jiabao, told parliament on Sunday, amid heightened tension between Beijing and Taipei.
   ‘We will uncompromisingly oppose secessionist activities aimed at Taiwan independence,’ Wen told the opening day of the National People’s Congress annual session.
   China views Taiwan as part of its territory to be regained by force if necessary. China and Taiwan split in 1949 after the Nationalist forces lost a civil war to the communists and fled to the island.
   Tensions rose last week after the Taiwan president, Chen Shui-bian, formally scrapped an advisory council and guidelines on eventual reunification with the mainland.
   The council was considered largely symbolic and had been dormant since 2000 but Chen’s decision infuriated Beijing, which accused him of pushing the region towards disaster.
   Taiwanese authorities Sunday rebuffed Wen’s warning against the island’s independence movement saying Taiwan’s future should be decided by the people here rather than Beijing.
   ‘It was nothing new at all. We are not surprised,’ Huang Wei-feng, deputy chief of Taiwan’s China policy decision-making body Mainland Affairs Council, told reporters when asked to comment on Wen’s remarks.
   ‘They have been doing this all the way. Didn’t they say they have hinged their hope on Taiwan people? But as a matter of fact, they have no idea what Taiwan people are thinking and what they want,’ Huang said.
   ‘Everyone wants cross-strait relations to be peaceful and stable, and develop to the mutual benefit of both sides,’ Wen said.
   ‘Anyone who tries to reverse this major trend will most certainly fail. It is the common wish of all Chinese people to see the ultimate realisation of the great cause of national reunification, a process that no one can stop.’
   However Wen did not directly threaten any military action if the island were to formally break away, in line with generally toned-down rhetoric that China is employing so as not to give ammunition to Taiwan’s independence supporters.
   Parliament last year passed an anti-secession law that gave its military the legal basis to attack the island it moved towards independence.
   The law allows the use of ‘non-peaceful means and other necessary measures to protect China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity’ if all else fails.
   Wen’s comments on Taiwan, made towards the end of a wide-ranging two-hour speech, received one of the loudest rounds of applause from the 2,927 delegates to the congress.
   One delegate, a People’s Liberation Army official, was quoted by the Xinhua news agency as saying the army resolutely opposed ‘Taiwan independence’ and will be prepared for a battle if the situation came to that.

Tens of thousands of people have been held ‘arbitrarily’ in Iraq since the start of the US-led invasion in March 2003, creating a situation that is ripe for abuse, Amnesty International said Monday.
   Most of those held were neither charged nor faced trial and had no basic right to challenge their detention, the London-based human rights group said as it launched a new report ‘Beyond Abu Ghraib: Detention and Torture in Iraq’.
   ‘Nearly three years after the US and allied forces invaded Iraq and toppled the government of Saddam Hussein, the human rights situation in the country remains dire,’ it said.
   ‘The deployment of US-led forces in Iraq and the armed response that engendered has resulted in thousands of deaths of civilians and widespread abuses amid the ongoing conflict.’
   The report details what AI calls ‘human rights violations for which the US-led multi-national force is directly responsible’ as well as those increasingly committed by Iraqi security forces.
   ‘The record of these forces, including US forces and their United Kingdom allies, is an unpalatable one,’ they note.
   It added: ‘Since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, tens of thousands of people have been detained by foreign forces, mainly the US forces, without being charged or tried and without the right to challenge their detention before a judicial body.’
   Quoting MNF figures, AI said there were more than 14,000 security detainees in coalition custody at the end of November 2005.
   Some 4,710 were held at Abu Ghraib prison with 138 at Camp Cropper—both in Baghdad – 7,365 at Camp Bucca, near Basra, and 1,176 at Fort Suse, near Suleimaniya.
   A further 650 were held at other military facilities elsewhere in Iraq.
   ‘Some of the detainees had been held for more than two years without any effective remedy or recourse; others have been released without explanation or apology or reparation after months of detention, victims of a system that is arbitrary and a recipe for abuse,’ AI said.
   It charged the multi-national force of depriving detainees of human rights guaranteed in international law and standards, claiming about 750 people held from before Saddam was toppled had still not been charged or tried.
   Iraqi authorities were also accused of riding roughshod over international conventions by using torture and ill-treatment in detention facilities.

Right-wing allies of Sri Lanka’s president have renewed moves to drop support for his shaky minority in parliament over his failure to take a harder line with Tamil rebels, officials said Sunday.
   President Mahinda Rajapakse called an all-party meeting for Monday to discuss the peace process, which the nationalist all-Buddhist monk party, the JHU, and the Marxist JVP will attend.
   ‘Crisis talks (with the JHU and the JVP) will take place after Monday’s all-party meeting,’ a source close to Rajapakse said. ‘The president has already asked his peace delegation to brief the two parties before he meets with them.
   ‘The idea is to keep them on the side of the government.’
   The two allies supported Rajapakse in the November presidential election after he pledged to take a harder line with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
   However, the parties said Rajapakse failed to press the rebels at talks in Switzerland last month to shore up a shaky four-year ceasefire. They have threatened to withhold crucial support in parliament as a result.
   ‘The talks venue itself went against the election manifesto set out by the president,’ JHU spokesman Champaka Ranawaka told reporters.
   ‘The government failed to amend the ceasefire agreement as we had planned before.’

Al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has urged the radical Islamist movement Hamas to fight on and not to accept agreements between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.
   Speaking in video footage broadcast Saturday on the Arabic television channel Al-Jazeera, Zawahiri described the agreements as ‘surrender accords’ and called on Hamas, victors in the January 25 Palestinian election, ‘to continue the armed struggle.’
   Zawahiri also called on Muslims to boycott Western countries that have ‘insulted the Prophet Mohammed (SM)’ by printing cartoons depicting him.
   Osama bin Laden’s lieutenant and chief ideologue of the al-Qaeda terror network, the Egyptian Zawahiri mentioned specifically the 1993 Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation, as well as the current international ‘roadmap’ peace plan.
   ‘The surrender accords signed by the lay members of the Palestinian Authority must not be recognised. Your only alternative is to pursue the armed struggle until the liberation of Palestine and the building of an Islamic state,’ he told Hamas.
   Zawahiri called on the Islamist movement not to take up their seats in the parliament, the Palestinian Legislative Council, ‘with lay people who have sold out Palestine.’

The Archbishop of Canterbury has warned that the worldwide Anglican Church faces a fundamental ‘rupture’ on the issue of homosexuality.
   Dr Rowan Williams told BBC One’s The Heaven and Earth Show he feared any split could take decades to heal.
   Traditionalists have given the Church in the US until June to reverse its approach on ordaining gay clergy - or face expulsion from the Communion.
   Some liberals back a looser, federal structure for the Anglican Communion. Dr Williams said he feared any split would run too deep to make this possible.
   The archbishop, who is visiting Sudan, was speaking in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday.
   ‘If there is a rupture, it’s going to be a more visible rupture, it is not going to settle down quietly to being a federation,’ he said. ‘And I suppose my anxiety about it is that if the communion is broken we may be left with even less than a federation.’
   He warned that it could take decades to re-establish some sort of relationship between the different factions in the Anglican Communion.
   BBC religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott said the comments were ‘Dr Williams’ starkest public warning about the impending schism in the Anglican Communion over sexuality’.

A Japanese city will vote March 12 on whether to allow more US warplanes on its soil, in a largely symbolic referendum on a controversial plan to shift US forces in the country, officials said Sunday.
   Under the plan, the southwestern city of Iwakuni will become home to a further 57 US carrier-based warplanes to be relocated from Kanagawa prefecture near Tokyo.
   Iwakuni mayor Katsusuke Ihara, who once opposed the plan but has since adopted a neutral position, called on residents to cast their ballots to ensure the vote is valid.
   If turnout is under 50 per cent the poll will be invalidated.
   ‘Please do vote! This is the last chance to convey your voice to the central government!’ the mayor said in a statement.
   The central government has the final say on the redeployment, so the effect of the
   election would be largely symbolic.
   ‘It would be a shame for Iwakuni residents, should the turnout rate fall below 50 per cent amid national attention on the vote,’ he said.

The Australian prime minister, John Howard, effectively ruled out selling uranium to India as he headed for New Delhi Sunday.
   India wants to expand its nuclear power industry but Howard indicated there would be no uranium deal as the Asian country had not signed the United Nations treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.
   ‘We don’t have any plan to change our current policy,’ he told reporters ahead of his departure.
   Howard said a pact signed last Thursday by the US president, George W Bush, and the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, on the sharing of nuclear technology would not change Australia’s stance.
   ‘We’re certainly not going to suddenly change our policy just because the Indians and Americans have reached an agreement,’ he said.

Thousands of Muslims took to the streets of the Indonesian capital on Sunday and marched towards the US embassy, denouncing Washington as the enemy of Islam and calling on Jakarta to embrace Sharia law.
   More than 6,000 members of the hardline Hizbut Tahrir rallied to the central Monas square, opposite the US embassy to protest alleged injustices against their religion across the world, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan.
   ‘US: enemy of the world,’ stated one of the many anti-US placards carried by the protesters, including veiled women and their children. ‘Down, Down (with) the USA. Rise, Rise (with) the Caliphate’ said others.
   ‘US, get out of Iraq,’ yelled a speaker near the embassy compound. Out front two water cannons were deployed.

Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani issued a veiled warning Sunday that the Islamic republic could use oil as a weapon if subjected to increased international pressure over its nuclear programme.
   ‘We have no interest in using oil as a weapon because we respect the psychological security of the international community,’ Larijani said, repeating Iran’s position that it would not initiate such a move.
   ‘But naturally if they change the situation that will automatically be affected too,’ he warned, without elaborating.
   Iran will not freeze sensitive nuclear ‘research’ work even if it is hauled before the UN Security Council, Larijani also said.
   ‘Research and development is in our national interest and Iran will not go back on that,’ he told reporters on the eve of a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
   The comments came on the eve of a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency that is expected to clear the way for the UN Security Council to consider acting against Iran over fears it is seeking nuclear weapons.
   The United States and European powers have been mulling what pressure—including possible sanctions—they could employ against Iran if it refuses to return to a moratorium on sensitive nuclear work.
   But Iran—OPEC’s second biggest producer—has consistently warned that any sanctions involving oil would have worse consequences for the rest of the world.
   The Islamic republic insists its nuclear programme is merely aimed at generating electricity in order to meet booming domestic energy demand and free up its vast oil and gas reserves for export.
   International concerns are cantered on Iran’s bid to master uranium enrichment, even via small-scale research.
   Tehran says it only wants to make reactor fuel, but the process can be extended to the fissile core of a nuclear weapons and the West is determined to prevent Iran acquiring enrichment know-how.
   Meanwhile, Iran said it is not ready to ‘bargain’ over its bid to master sensitive nuclear work, despite an immediate risk of punitive action from the UN Security Council.
   ‘Nuclear research will go on, and threats, propaganda and bullying will not affect us,’ foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters, referring to the country’s controversial uranium enrichment work.
   The UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, opens a meeting Monday that is expected to clear the way for the Security Council to consider acting against Iran over fears it seeks nuclear weapons.

In a bid to limit leaks of classified information, the administration of president, George W Bush, has launched initiatives targeting journalists and their possible government sources, The Washington Post reported Sunday.
   Citing unnamed law enforcement and intelligence officials, the newspaper said dozens of employees of the CIA, the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies have been interviewed in recent weeks by FBI agents, who are investigating possible leaks that led to reports about secret CIA prisons and the NSA’s warrantless domestic surveillance programme.
   Numerous employees at the CIA, FBI, Justice Department and other agencies also have received letters from the Justice Department prohibiting them from discussing even unclassified issues related to the NSA programme, the report said, citing sources familiar with the notices.
   FBI agents from Los Angeles have already contacted reporters at the Sacramento Bee about stories published in July that were based on sealed court documents related to a terrorism case in Lodi, California, the paper said.
   Some media watchers, lawyers and editors say that, taken together, the incidents represent perhaps the most extensive and overt campaign against leaks in a generation, The Post said.
   And they have worsened the already-tense relationship between mainstream news organisations and the White House, the report pointed out.
   ‘There’s a tone of gleeful relish in the way they talk about dragging reporters before grand juries, their appetite for withholding information, and the hints that reporters who look too hard into the public’s business risk being branded traitors,’ the report quotes New York Times executive editor Bill Keller as telling the paper.
   ‘I don’t know how far action will follow rhetoric, but some days it sounds like the administration is declaring war at home on the values it professes to be promoting abroad,’ Keller said.

Superstar Tom Cruise, his fiancee Katie Holmes and his ex-wife Nicole Kidman won dishonour Saturday at the annual Golden Razzie awards, an Oscars spoof held a day ahead of the big awards.
   Tom Cruise and his pregnant paramour scooped the lowest award in the Razzies newest category, Most Tiresome Tabloid Targets of 2005, but they had to share their shame with Oprah ‘Winfrey’s Couch, The Eiffel Tower and ‘Tom’s Baby.’
   Cruise, 43, famously announced he was in love with Holmes by jumping on talk show queen Winfrey’s sofa during a broadcast last year, Cruise then proposed to Holmes, 26, atop Paris’ Eiffel Tower in June and announced they were expecting in October, all amid a massive glare of tabloid publicity.
   Razzie founder John Wilson said the formerly ultra-private Cruise deserved the award because he made a spectacle of himself when he decided to ‘suddenly propose in front of reporters on the Eiffel Tower and jump up and down like the monkey in ‘Curious George’ on Oprah Winfrey’s couch.’
   Cruise’s Oscar-winning ex, Kidman, shared the Razzie award for the worst screen couple of 2005 with Will Ferrell for their movie version of the 1960s television show ‘Bewitched.’
   ‘Top Gun’ and ‘Mission Impossible’ star Cruise, separated from Kidman, 38, in 2001 after 10 years of marriage, later divorced her and began dating Holmes after at least one other high-profile romance in April last year.
   In the most tiresome celebrity category, Cruise and Holmes beat ‘The Simpsons’—singing sisters Ashlee, Jessica and Jessica’s estranged husband Nick Lachey; new mom Britney Spears; and hotel heiress Paris Hilton in the category.
   The couple dubbed ‘TomKat’ reigned over a year marked by a string of tired remakes and movie sequels led by the comedy adventure ‘Son of the Mask,’ which went to Saturday’s show armed with eight nominations.
   The gross out romantic comedy ‘Dirty Love,’ written by and starring former Playboy Playmate Jenny McCarthy, took home the most gold spray-painted statuettes with three at the 26th annual Razzie Awards held in Hollywood.

Heavy security as China’s parliament opens
China deployed a huge and highly visible security force for the opening of its annual session of parliament on Sunday, detaining hundreds of potential protesters and silencing well-known activists. The Great Hall of the People, the meeting venue just west of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, became off-limits to ordinary Chinese as the 2,927 delegates of the National People’s Congress assembled early in the day. Busloads of soldiers were at the ready along the Great Hall, while sniffer dogs checked all cars entering Tiananmen Square, which was turned into a giant car park for the opening of the NPC.

Danish embassy in Jakarta to reopen
The Danish embassy in Jakarta will reopen on Monday after remaining shut for three weeks following angry protests over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, an Indonesian official said Sunday. ‘We have been officially informed that the embassy will reopen on Monday,’ foreign ministry spokesman Desra Percaya said. Percaya said the government would step up security at the embassy but did not provide further details. He added that Danish diplomats and staff had returned to the country with their families. The embassy closed last month following a spate of protests there by various Indonesian Muslim groups against the publication of the cartoons.

Canadian troop dies after Afghan crash
A Canadian soldier died Sunday from injuries suffered in a crash in Afghanistan last week while another was in a serious condition after a savage axe attack, Canadian forces said. Master Corporal Timothy Wilson died in hospital in Germany from injuries suffered in Thursday’s accident near the southern city of Kandahar in which another Canadian troop was killed and five others hurt, a spokesman said. Wilson was the crew commander of the armoured vehicle that veered off the road, lieutenant Mark MacIntyre said. Canada has about 2,300 troops in Kandahar. Lieutenant Trevor Greene was meanwhile in a serious condition at Kandahar Airfield after he was struck on the head with an axe by a lone assailant Saturday while meeting village elders at Shinkay, 70 kilometres north of Kandahar.

Radio announcer abducted in Philippines
A radio broadcaster has been kidnapped by unidentified armed men in the northern Philippines in the latest attack on the press in this country, a press watchdog said Sunday. Joey Estriber, 37, a commentator on DZJO radio in the town of Baler in Luzon island was seized near a cafe on Friday, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines said. Witnesses quoted by the union said Estriber cried out for help while he was being dragged to a waiting van with tinted glasses and without a registry number. Apart from hosting a radio programme Estriber is said to be active in community work and belonged to a non-government organisation.
— AFP

‘US-Russia relations impaired’
Russia’s emergence as an increasingly authoritarian state could impair US-Russian ability to cooperate on key international security issues, according to an analysis by a major foreign policy organisation. Continuation of Russia’s drift away from democratic norms under the president, Vladimir Putin, ‘will make it harder for the two sides to find common ground and harder to cooperate even when they do,’ said the report, issued by the Council on Foreign Relations. It warned that some critical problems cannot be dealt with effectively unless Moscow and Washington cooperate. ‘If Russia remains on an authoritarian course, US-Russian relations will almost certainly continue to fall short of their potential,’ it said. The report was co-chaired by Jack Kemp, a former Republican presidential candidate; and John Edwards, the Democratic candidate for vice president in 2004.
— AP

6 Russian soldiers, two cops die in Chechnya
Clashes in the war-torn region of Chechnya left six Russian soldiers and two policemen dead and another 10 soldiers wounded over 24 hours, a source in the Chechen pro-Russian local government said late Saturday. The official, who asked not to be identified, said that two soldiers were killed and five wounded as Russian positions came under fire in ten different locations throughout Chechnya. In a separate incident, three soldiers were killed in an ambush in the eastern village of Niki Khita. Five more soldiers were wounded. Another soldier was killed in a shootout in Chechnya’s southern Itum Kale region.
— AFP

Polls open at Benin presidential election
Polls opened at a presidential election in Benin on Sunday to replace long-serving president Mathieu Kerekou. Almost four million voters were to go to the polls to choose from 26 candidates at an election which could see a renewal of the west African republic’s political scene for the first time in three decades. Voters trickled to the polls as they opened at sunrise at 7:00am (0600 GMT), an AFP correspondent at the scene said. Polls were due to close at 4:00pm (1500 GMT) and the official results of the first round election will not be known for several days. President Mathieu Kerekou has ruled Benin for 30 of the past 34 years, but neither he nor his perennial challenger Nicephore Soglo are up for election this time, as both are above the 70-year age limit.
— AFP

Three killed in attack on Baghdad mosque
Three men guarding a Sunni mosque in Baghdad were shot dead overnight when gunmen, dressed in police commando uniforms, attacked the building, an interior ministry official said Sunday. Six other guards were wounded in an exchange of gunfire that went on for an hour in the Jihad neighbourhood of west Baghdad, the official added. There was no damage to the mosque. Meanwhile, one Iraqi soldier was killed and two wounded when a suicide bomber blew up a car at an army checkpoint in Mahmudiya, south of the capital, Saturday night, the official said.
— AFP

Egypt arrest 12 Brotherhood
members
Egyptian authorities have detained a total of 12 members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood group in sweeps this week, the police and an official for the group said Saturday. The arrests came Friday in Cairo and other Egyptian cities, targeting mainly university organisers for the Brotherhood, which became Egypt’s largest opposition group in parliament after a surprise showing in elections last year. The police said the 12 were arrested for hiding money, printers and other material advertising for the Muslim Brotherhood.
— AP