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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration prepared on Friday to host South Korea's top trade official to an evening meeting that aimed to ease the uproar in South Korea over a recent deal to resume American beef shipments.

JAMMU, India (Reuters) - Separatist rebels killed four Indian soldiers, including two senior officers, and their driver in an ambush in Indian Kashmir on Friday, an army official said.

GENEVA (Reuters) - China has improved the safety of its blood supply by drawing in more volunteer donors, some of whom will be awarded Olympics-inspired "medals for life," the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Trade envoys were told on Friday to "go like hell" to clinch a deal on industrial goods next week and diplomats said the day of reckoning in the World Trade Organization's long-running Doha round was fast approaching.

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia on Friday rejected a proposed European Union police mission for Kosovo and accused U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of overreaching his powers in its former province.

NAZRAN, Russia (Reuters) - Several people were killed in one of the worst spates of violence for months in Russia's North Caucasus, officials said on Friday.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Several thousand protesters gathered outside Pakistan's parliament on Friday for the climax of a cross-country rally by lawyers and activists demanding the reinstatement of judges fired by President Pervez Musharraf.

BEIJING (Reuters) - A blast in a north China coal mine left 34 workers trapped underground on Friday, after rescuers lifted nine to safety, Xinhua news agency reported.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - The European Union's top diplomat will on Saturday hand Iran an offer of trade and other benefits from world powers if it suspends nuclear enrichment, which the Islamic Republic has repeatedly refused to do.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey and Syria are considering setting up a joint energy company and could build joint nuclear power plants for electricity, Syria's oil minister was quoted as saying on Friday.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict gave George W. Bush an unprecedented welcome in the tranquility of the Vatican Gardens on Friday before the U.S. president resumed his campaign to rally European support for sanctions against Iran.

Simon Denyer is India bureau chief for Reuters, with responsibility also for Nepal and Bhutan. He has visited Nepal a dozen times in the last four years, covering a Maoist insurgency, the power grab of King Gyanendra, pro-democracy protests and the peace process. In the following story, he recounts the scene at Gyanendra's farewell news conference and his reflections.

PARIS (Reuters) - Donors led by the United States pledged about $20 billion in aid to Afghanistan on Thursday but said Kabul must do far more to fight corruption.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Support for Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's cabinet rose in a public opinion poll released on Friday, but more than half wanted the leader to call an early election after he suffered a non-binding censure motion.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The United Nations and NATO rushed on Thursday to iron out snags in the troubled international security presence for Kosovo, just days ahead of its constitution coming into force.

GAZA (Reuters) - Hamas's military wing said on Friday an explosion that killed eight Palestinians in the Gaza Strip was an accident that occurred as militants prepared to carry out a bomb attack.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - At least four people died on Friday in Russia's volatile Chechnya and Dagestan provinces in what police said were rebel attacks, Russian media reported.

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain and Malaysia tightened security on Thursday to stop strikes against soaring global fuel prices turning violent, as well as snarling road networks and slowing deliveries of food and raw materials.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union, opening up a new transatlantic trade spat, will investigate whether soaring imports of U.S. biodiesel break global trade rules because of subsidies, the EU's executive Commission said on Friday.

PARIS (Reuters) - A possible Irish rejection of the European Union's Lisbon treaty should not stop other member states ratifying it, a French minister said on Friday.