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Reuters, Baghdad

Three U.S. soldiers were killed in two separate incidents in northern Iraq, the U.S. military said on Wednesday, the latest casualties in what has been the deadliest year of the war for U.S. forces.

In Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed one civilian and wounded two just outside the heavily fortified Green Zone compound that houses the U.S. embassy and government ministries, police said.

The explosion in central Baghdad shook buildings in the Green Zone, and was one of the loudest heard in the capital in weeks after a lull in attacks that had become almost a daily occurrence earlier this year.

Police said the bomb targeted a passing U.S. military convoy. One vehicle had been hit, police said, but it was unclear if there were any American casualties.

A witness at a hotel inside the Green Zone said the force of the blast shook the dust off the building's outside walls.

Two U.S. soldiers died and four were wounded when they were hit by a roadside bomb in restive Diyala province northeast of Baghdad on Tuesday, the military said in a statement.

Roadside bombs are by far the biggest killers of U.S. troops in Iraq.

Another U.S. soldier was shot and killed near the volatile city of Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad.

Their deaths took the total of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq to 3,863, according to the independent Web site icasualties.org, which tracks military and civilian casualties in Iraq.

U.S. military and Iraqi civilian casualties dropped sharply in the previous two months, with a boost of 30,000 extra troops, improving Iraqi security forces and the growing use of neighborhood police units being credited for the declines.

However, about 860 U.S. troops have been killed so far this year, the worst annual total since the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003. The previous worst yearly total was in 2004, when 849 U.S. soldiers were killed.

U.S. President George W. Bush sent the extra troops to Iraq in a last-ditch bid to stop Iraq from spiraling into sectarian civil war between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs who were dominant under Saddam.

The offensive began in mid-February, when Iraq was gripped by multiple bombings and shooting attacks almost every day. Attacks in Baghdad and elsewhere have gradually declined since the "surge" troops became fully operational in mid-June.

However ethnically mixed Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, and Diyala province remain trouble spots after al Qaeda in Iraq, blamed for most big car bomb attacks, were squeezed out of western Anbar province and Baghdad and headed to those regions.

AFP, Lahore

Benazir Bhutto sought Wednesday to forge a united front against Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf as the United States pressed the increasingly isolated military ruler to end emergency rule. Bhutto, a two-time former premier, has begun reaching out to other leaders of the fractious opposition after breaking off with Musharraf, urging him to resign as president and vowing never to serve under him in government.

She remained under house arrest in the eastern city of Lahore, where around 1,000 police maintained their security stranglehold around a residence surrounded by barbed wire and barricades.

Meanwhile Washington, which views Musharraf's Pakistan as a key ally in its "war on terror," is despatching John Negroponte, the deputy to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, to Islamabad later this week.

Negroponte, who will be the highest-ranking US official to visit since the crisis erupted, will press for an end to the emergency. Interviewed by the New York Times and other newspapers, Musharraf rejected calls by Rice to rescind the measures, which he has indicated would continue until general elections promised by January 9.

"I totally disagree with her," Musharraf said. "The emergency is to ensure elections go in an undisturbed manner."

AFP, Gaza City

Hamas rounded up at least 200 Fatah party members in Gaza on Tuesday, the day after Islamist gunmen killed seven people at a mass rally that underscored the deep divisions between rival Palestinians.

The official Palestinian press denounced the killings as a "massacre" while hundreds of Palestinians took to the streets in towns across the occupied West Bank to vent their anger against Hamas.

The Hamas force that has policed Gaza since the Islamist group violently seized power in June "arrested scores of senior Fatah members and members of our branch offices," senior Fatah official Ibrahim Abu al-Naga told AFP.

The raids came after Hamas police violently dispersed hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Fatah supporters, who had massed in the heart of Gaza City on Monday to commemorate Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's death.

Seven people were killed and another 130 wounded, according to medics, in an incident condemned by human rights groups.

Monday's gathering was the largest mobilisation of support for the Fatah party of Arafat and his successor Mahmud Abbas since Hamas routed the secular faction's security forces in bloody clashes five months ago.

AP, Yangon

Myanmar's military junta arrested three more activists Wednesday, witnesses said, surging ahead with a crackdown even as it hosted a U.N. human rights investigator and insisted that all arrests had stopped.

The latest to be nabbed were at least three people handing out anti-regime pamphlets at the busy Thiri Mingalar fruit and vegetable market in Yangon, shoppers and other witnesses said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they feared reprisals from the government.

"I saw at least three young men in white shirts being arrested by market security officials," said one of the witnesses, a market worker. The leaflets included a statement from the United Nations and one saying that forcing people to take part in pro-junta rallies violated the Geneva Conventions. The incident followed earlier arrests of two prominent dissidents. One came Tuesday as U.N. human rights envoy Paulo Sergio Pinheiro met with Cabinet ministers in the junta's remote, jungle capital Naypyitaw.

AFP, London

Veterinary authorities confirmed an outbreak of the potentially lethal Asian strain of bird flu in eastern England on Tuesday, in a new blow to the British farming industry.

More than 6,000 poultry were ordered to be slaughtered at the site in Suffolk, where an exclusion zone was imposed on Monday after a suspected outbreak was found. "I can now confirm that the strain of avian influenza found in the infected premises is the highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 strain," said deputy chief veterinary officer Fred Landeg.

"It is of the Asian lineage. It is closely related to strains of the highly pathogenic avian influenza found this summer in the Czech Republic and in Germany," he added.

On Monday, officials ordered the slaughter of poultry at the farm, which houses free-range turkeys, ducks and geese, while the Food Standards Agency reassured consumers that poultry meat and eggs were still safe to eat, so long as they were cooked properly. The cull involves some 5,000 turkeys, more than 1,000 ducks and 500 geese. About 100 turkeys were found dead on Sunday, and overnight between Sunday and Monday a further 80 birds died.

Ducks and geese were not displaying symptoms, Landeg added. Hilary Benn, the environment secretary, told parliament Tuesday that officials were doing their "darnedest" to ensure the disease did not spread, and said the anti-viral drug Tamiflu had been given to all those who were involved in the poultry cull.

Reuters, Kabul

Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces killed dozens of Taliban fighters in the south of the country after an ambush by a large group of insurgents, the U.S. military said on Wednesday.

Despite the high casualty rates among Taliban rebels whenever they clash directly with Afghan and foreign troops, the insurgency shows no sign of abating, but instead has spread from the south and east to areas previously considered safe.

In the latest fighting, Afghan forces, backed by U.S.-led coalition troops were ambushed by a large group of insurgents using small arms and rocket-propelled grenades in the Deh Rawud district of Uruzgan province on Tuesday, a U.S. military statement said.

"The Taliban fighters attempted to break contact and moved into a nearby compound causing women and children to flee the area," it said. "Four separate precision air strikes effectively eliminated the insurgents who were trying to reinforce the enemy positions."

Dozens of Taliban insurgents were killed, a U.S. military spokesman said. Afghan and foreign forces accuse the Taliban of courting civilian casualties by operating from homes and populated areas.

AP, Vienna

Iran has met a key demand of the U.N. nuclear agency, handing over long-sought blueprints showing how to mold uranium metal into the shape of warheads, diplomats said Tuesday. Iran's decision to release the documents, which were seen by U.N. inspectors two years ago, was seen as a concession designed to head off the threat of new U.N. sanctions. But the diplomats said Tehran has failed to meet other requests made by the International Atomic Energy Agency in its attempts to end nearly two decades of nuclear secrecy on the part of Iran. The diplomats spoke to The Associated Press as IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei put the finishing touches on his latest report to his agency's 35-nation board of governors for consideration next week. While ElBaradei is expected to say that Iran has improved its cooperation with his agency's probe, the findings are unlikely to deter the United States, France and Britain from pushing for a third set of U.N. sanctions.

AP, Seoul

The prime ministers of North and South Korea met Wednesday for the first time in 15 years, hoping to extend the detente fostered by the second-ever summit of their leaders last month with new South Korean investment in the impoverished North. North Korean Prime Minister Kim Yong Il said after arriving in Seoul on a direct flight from Pyongyang that he thought the three days of talks would "go well in a warm atmosphere" based on his welcome. The two sides last held prime ministerial talks in 1992 that were suspended amid the first crisis over the North's nuclear weapons program. Kim ranks below the top members of the North's ruling elite: leader Kim Jong Il and the country's No. 2 official Kim Yong Nam. He is meeting with South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, who is the deputy of South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun. This week's talks are aimed at fleshing out an agreement that Roh and the North Korean leader signed at their October summit in Pyongyang - only the second such meeting since the Korean peninsula was divided more than half a century ago.

AFP, Copenhagen

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen's centre-right bloc won Tuesday's election with the slimmest possible majority and will now seek to form a broader but possibly shakier alliance.

"We have received a mandate to continue our work t I want to seek a broad majority in parliament and I will invite all the parties who supported the government in for talks on a joint program," Rasmussen told supporters after declaring victory. Rasmussen's Liberal-Conservative minority coalition has governed with the support of the far-right anti-immigrant Danish People's Party (DPP) since 2001. Together the three parties were expected to win 89 seats, one shy of a majority, with 100 percent of votes on the mainland counted. They were expected to gain one more seat from the autonomous Faroe Islands, where results had yet to be tallied. The prime minister's invite was pointed directly at the newly-formed centre-right New Alliance, whose five seats would be a welcome boost to Rasmussen's bloc.

AP, Manila

A bomb exploded at an entrance of the Philippine House of Representatives late Tuesday, killing a congressman and a driver. Police and soldiers in the capital went on high alert after the explosion, which injured nine people. The blast happened as the House ended its session shortly after 8 p.m., officials said. "At this point in time I'm saying it's a bomb, but I can't say what type of bomb," National police chief Avelino Razon said. Political tensions are high in the country. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is facing a third impeachment complaint in as many years. Muslim militants also have bombed targets in the capital in the past. Rep. Wahab Akbar's chief of staff said the congressman died of wounds in a hospital, and Manila's police chief Geary Barias said a lawmaker's driver also was killed. An explosion rocked an entrance to the Philippine House of Representatives late Tuesday, killing a driver and injuring at least nine people, including lawmakers, officials said. Police and soldiers in the capital went on high alert. A lawmaker's driver was killed, said police chief Geary Barias.

Reuters, Paris

France faced travel chaos on Wednesday as transport unions broadened a nationwide strike against a pensions reform that President Nicolas Sarkozy says is needed to shore up state accounts. Workers at rail operator SNCF went on strike on Tuesday evening and were joined on Wednesday by Paris transport workers and staff at power and gas utilities EdF and GdF -- the second time they have all downed tools in a month. The open-ended stoppage poses the biggest challenge to Sarkozy since he came to power six months ago pledging a deep-seated reform of the economy. Only a handful of trains were scheduled to run on Wednesday and Paris's metro and bus systems were operating vastly reduced services, although some lines were less affected than initially predicted. Energy unions said they planned targeted power cuts of individual buildings rather than widescale blackouts.