World Highlights

¤ A suspected suicide bomber killed at least 17 people and wounded almost 50 in a crowded bazaar in southern Afghanistan, the latest attack in a surge of violence in the Taliban heartland.

Several children were among those killed or hurt in the blast in Lashkar Gah, capital of the province of Helmand.

¤ Tropical Storm Ernesto drenched southeastern Cuba as it stayed on a path toward the Florida Straits, where it could regain its hurricane strength and then hit the densely populated Miami-Fort Lauderdale area.

The US National Hurricane Centre said Ernesto's winds dropped to 65 kph as it moved inland in eastern Cuba, but said heavy rains could cause life-threatening flash floods and mud slides.

¤ Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced a low-level inquiry into the Lebanon war, rejecting a fuller, independent probe that could have led to high-level resignations in the government and military.

In a prime-time speech, Olmert acknowledged shortcomings in the way the 34-day campaign against Hizbollah was pursued but said the decision to go to war was his alone and that an inquiry should look at the government's actions not the military's.

¤ Mexico's top electoral court threw out leftists' allegations of massive fraud in last month's presidential election, handing almost certain victory to conservative candidate Felipe Calderon.

The seven judges voted unanimously to reject most of the legal complaints by left-wing candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who said he was robbed of victory in the July 2 vote.

¤ Violence flared in Pakistan's turbulent Baluchistan province and at least one person was killed during protests over the killing of a nationalist rebel chief, police and residents said.

Political parties in the gas-rich southwestern province called for a protest strike in the wake of Saturday's killing of veteran leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti during a battle with government troops.

¤ The UN and aid workers prepared to receive hundreds of children who are supposed to be freed under a landmark truce between Uganda's government and Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels.

Under the deal agreed on Saturday at peace talks in southern Sudan, the guerrillas - and their ranks of abducted child soldiers, porters and sex slaves - have three weeks to assemble at two south Sudan camps while negotiations continue.

¤ Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika will decide soon whether to extend a six-month amnesty for Islamist rebels who have fought for years to overthrow the government, state radio reported.

Bouteflika will act after studying a report on the results of the amnesty, part of a wider national reconciliation plan to bring an end to more than a decade of bloodshed in Africa's second largest country.

¤ Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has scolded his nation for over-reliance on oil, foreigners and imports and told it to start manufacturing things people need.

The criticisms, in an unusual series of speeches in July and August, have stirred keen interest in a forthcoming annual September 1 address to the nation of 5 million marking the 1969 coup d'etat that brought him to power.