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From house arrest in Lahore, Pakistan, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto said President Pervez Musharraf "must" resign as head of state and commander of the Army. She also ruled out returning to her old post in a power-sharing government "because I ... won't be able to believe anything he says to me." Bhutto said she'd try to build an alliance with other opposition leaders to work for the restoration of democracy and that her People's Party is "unlikely" to participate in the election for parliament that Musharraf has scheduled in January. Above, police block access to the street on which Bhutto lives.

Calm returned to the Gaza Strip Tuesday, following the deaths of seven people when Hamas security forces fired on a huge rally by rival Fatah supporters. But Fatah spokesmen said Hamas followed up the violence by arresting the organizers and hundreds of participants in the demonstration. The trouble was the worst there since Hamas seized control last June. Analysts said the show of strength by Fatah was unexpected, and former Gaza security chief Mohammad Dahlan said the harsh response was a sign that Hamas is losing its grip in the coastal territory.

Police were reluctant to say what caused a powerful explosion that killed one person and hurt as many as 12 others Tuesday night as they left a late session of Congress in the Philippines. Early reports suggested that it came from a car outside an entrance of the building in Quezon City, a Manila suburb. The government is battling Muslim and communist insurgencies, and bombings have been common in the southern Philippines. Last month, a blast in a Manila shopping mall killed 11 people, although police theorize that it was caused by a buildup of gases.

"There will be absolutely no discussion" of a production hike by members of OPEC at its meeting this weekend, Saudi Oil Minister Ali Naimi told the Financial Times Tuesday. Despite the price of crude on world markets – it has risen 42 percent since late August, to almost $100 a barrel – Naimi said the agenda would consist of "strategic issues and longer views." But the cartel was watching futures prices "very carefully," he said, and could discuss increasing output when it meets again next month.

Another fierce storm reportedly threatened the Russian waterway where a tanker broke apart Sunday, spilling 2,000 tons of oil on an area used by migrating birds. Volunteers, aided by hundreds of Army troops already were struggling against strong winds to clean the beaches and offload the remaining oil. Ecologists said much of the leakage was settling to the seafloor and predicted it would foul the water for at least five years. An estimated 30,000 birds have died after being coated with the oil.

Pro-Western President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia will lift the week-old state of emergency "in two or three days," a visiting US diplomat said Tuesday. Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza said he'd been told that by the speaker of parliament. The US has been pressuring Saakashvili (below) to call off the decree he issued after six days of opposition protests in Tbilisi, the capital. He has defended the move by accusing neighboring Russia of fomenting the protests and threatening to split the former Soviet republic.

Volunteers from Ireland finished a week-long project to build 200 houses in one of the poorest slums of Cape Town, South Africa. The dwellings, which have electricity and indoor plumbing, are financed by an Irish entrepreneur who bought a vacation home there but was repelled by the squalor in surrounding townships. The initiative is in its fifth year. Still, the national Institute of Race Relations reported Tuesday that the number of South Africans living on less than $1 a day has more than doubled since the end of apartheid in the mid-1990s.

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