World Highlights

¤ A suicide bomber killed nine people outside the offices of a Kurdish political party in northern Iraq and clashes between gunmen loyal to an anti-American Shi'ite cleric and Iraqi soldiers killed six in the south.

A dump truck rigged with explosives was detonated at the offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, led by Iraq's President Jalal Talabani, in the restive city of Mosul, Mosul police colonel Kareem Khalaf said.

¤ Hundreds of Mexican riot police in black body armor sealed Congress after violent clashes with leftist protesters and legislators who say last month's presidential election was stolen.

Police blocked streets around the Congress building, closing the area to prevent the return of demonstrators who want to rebuild a tent city to protest what they say was election fraud.

¤ A reporter for a Singapore newspaper went on trial in China accused of espionage, a rights group said, one of several cases that have highlighted Beijing's harsh controls of the flow of information.

Ching Cheong, a Hong Kong-based China correspondent for the Straits Times, was detained in China in April last year and charged with spying for Taiwan, the self-ruled island that rejects Beijing's claims of sovereignty.

¤ Two Norwegian and two Ukrainian oil workers kidnapped from a ship off the coast of Nigeria were freed yesterday after a week in captivity, a state government spokesman said. After five abductions of an estimated total of 16 people this month, the latest release probably cuts the number of foreign oil workers held hostage in Africa's top producer to seven.