World highlights

• Gunmen shot dead a Somali minister outside a mosque, triggering riots by pro-government protesters who threw rocks and burned tyres at the interim administration's provincial base of Baidoa. Witnesses said assailants opened fire on Constitution and...

• Gunmen shot dead a Somali minister outside a mosque, triggering riots by pro-government protesters who threw rocks and burned tyres at the interim administration's provincial base of Baidoa. Witnesses said assailants opened fire on Constitution and Federalism Minister Abdallah Deerow Isaq as he left prayers - an attack sure to heighten tensions in the violence-plagued Horn of Africa nation which many fear is sliding towards war.

• Democratic Republic of Congo is ready to hold its first multi-party elections in 40 years despite violence during campaigning in Kinshasa which killed at least six people, the United Nations said. "We're ready for elections on Sunday," Deputy UN Special Representative for Congo Ross Mountain said a day after supporters of one presidential candidate torched buildings and attacked police and journalists in the riverside capital.

• Finland and Denmark will quit the unarmed Nordic mission monitoring Sri Lanka's battered 2002 truce after a row with Tamil Tiger rebels over an EU terror ban, they said, as mortars and air strikes hit the island. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) demanded monitors from European Union states Sweden, Finland and Denmark quit the five-nation Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) by September 1 after the EU listed them as terrorists alongside Al Qaeda.

• Nepal's Maoist rebels extended their ceasefire by three months in a bid to support peace talks aimed at ending a decade- old insurgency that has killed thousands. The extension came hours before the truce - declared after King Gyanendra ended his absolute rule in April - was due to expire.

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