¤ An obscure Kashmiri militant group claimed responsibility yesterday for bomb blasts in India's capital which killed at least 59 people, but analysts said it was probably a front for a larger Pakistan-based group.
New Delhi has so far refused to speculate on who was behind Saturday's trio of blasts, but security experts see the hand of Lashkar-e-Taiba (Force of the Pure) behind the attacks, in an attempt to derail the peace process between India and Pakistan.
¤ The United Nations welcomed India and Pakistan's agreement yesterday to open their Kashmir border to earthquake survivors and relief supplies but said getting aid to millions remained a logistical nightmare.
In a statement early yesterday after talks in Islamabad, India and Pakistan agreed to open crossings at five points along the military Line of Control dividing Kashmir from November 7.
¤ Soldiers fired one live round and tear gas at opposition supporters yesterday in a clash outside a polling station in Zanzibar's historic Stone Town, witnesses said.
The soldiers poured in when opposition supporters reacted angrily to the arrival of scores of government supporters in vehicles shepherded by the military, Reuters witnesses said.
¤ Indonesian police increased patrols yesterday in the Poso area, plagued by sectarian violence for years, after assailants in black beheaded three teenage Christian girls.
At the Vatican, Pope Benedict offered his deepest sympathies to the families of the 16 to 19-year-old students, who police said were attacked by six machete-wielding men as they walked to school on Saturday on Indonesia's eastern island of Sulawesi.
¤ Hurricane Beta strengthened to a dangerous Category 3 early yesterday as it battered Nicaragua's Caribbean coast, where troops tried to rush thousands of people into shelters to escape its fierce winds and rains.
¤ The indictment of former top White House aide Lewis Libby in the CIA leak investigation will put Vice-president Dick Cheney's office at the centre of court proceedings, raising the spectre of a politically damaging trial for the beleaguered Bush administration.