Reuters World News Highlights

BEIJING – Chinese police have detained almost 100 monks after hundreds of people rioted and attacked a police station in an ethnic Tibetan part of the western province of Qinghai, state media said..
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WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama said military force alone would not end the war in Afghanistan and suggested a US “exit strategy” could be part of a new comprehensive policy he is expected to unveil soon.
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ISLAMABAD – Pakistani opposition leader Nawaz Sharif welcomed a call for reconciliation from President Asif Ali Zardari, a week after the government averted a political crisis by restoring the country’s top judge.
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ROME – US President Barack Obama is using a “new language” in relations with the Middle East and an official overture towards Hamas is only a matter of time, the Islamist group’s leader Khaled Meshaal said in a newspaper interview.
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KHARTOUM – Islamic scholars have told Sudan’s president not to travel to an Arab summit in Qatar at the end of March, state media reported, a move that offers him a way out of the risky trip.
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MADRID – The Spanish government confirmed it would withdraw most of its 600 troops from Kosovo by the end of the summer, backtracking on an earlier statement suggesting that the forces may remain longer.
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SRINAGAR, India – A three-day gun battle between Indian forces and militants in Kashmir has left at least 10 soldiers and rebels dead, the Indian army said, a day after it exchanged fire with Pakistan on the Kashmir border.
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LOS ANGELES – A single-engine plane, reported to be carrying children on a ski vacation to the Rocky Mountains, crashed on approach to an airport in western Montana, killing 17 people, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
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SKOPJE – Politics professor Gjorge Ivanov took a clear lead over his rivals yesterday in the first round of Macedonia’s election hailed by the European Union for its lack of violence.