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· MANILA -- A Peace Corps volunteer found buried in a shallow grave in a Philippine mountain village was killed by blows to the head, and there were signs that she had tried to ward off an attack, police said.
A bloodstained wooden pole used to pound rice was found near the home of a suspect in the death of Julia Campbell, 40, a freelance journalist from Fairfax, Va., who had been teaching English in the Philippines since October.
Pedro Ganir, police chief of Ifugao province, said the suspect has gone into hiding. He said the suspect's wife had sold a Coca-Cola to Campbell before she headed off on a hike in the area's famed mountainside rice terraces, a World Heritage site.
· SEOUL -- South Korea said Sunday it would give 400,000 tons of rice to impoverished North Korea despite the communist government's failure to meet a deadline to shut down its nuclear reactor.
South Korea will ship the first batch of rice aid late next month under an agreement reached in marathon negotiations overnight in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.
The move was seen as a setback in South Korea's attempt to use food aid as leverage to pressure the North to honor its pledge to shut down the reactor under a Feb. 13 nuclear disarmament deal with the U.S. and its regional partners.
· SAMDRUP JONGKHAR, Bhutan -- Thousands of Bhutanese practiced for democracy in mock elections Saturday, lining up neatly at polling stations in the latest step toward shedding nearly 100 years of absolute monarchy in the secluded Himalayan country.
Bhutan's 26-year-old king drove for two days across rugged mountains to encourage people to vote in his native village, on the border with India. The path toward 2008 parliamentary elections started with his father, who astounded his subjects four months ago by handing the throne to his Oxford-educated son.
AFRICA
· BANGUI, Central African Republic -- Thousands of people have fled fighting in northwestern Central African Republic, some swimming over the border after their homes were torched during government raids targeting rebels, local officials said.
Soldiers launched raids on villages on the northwestern border with Cameroon and Chad between Tuesday and Thursday to try to root out gunmen who attacked a town last weekend, the mayor of some of the affected settlements said.
THE AMERICAS
· SANTIAGO, Chile -- A strong earthquake rocked a part of southern Chile that has been hit by hundreds of tremors in the last three months that may be related to the birth of an undersea volcano.
The government's Emergency Bureau said preliminary reports indicate there were no victims or major damage in the sparsely populated area located in the Aysen Fjord, about 1,700 miles south of Santiago.
-- From News Services
