Britain Britain was due to announce that it had received a US request to move some of its troops in Iraq into restive, US-held areas, a move opponents warned could be seen as a pre-election stunt to assist President George W. Bush. Iraq The US army released a key Fallujah leader involved in negotiations to avert an all-out battle in the rebel hub west of Baghdad in a positive sign for a resumption of peace talks, officials said. Iraq Thirteen Iraqis were killed over the past 24 hours in bomb blasts around the country, while nine people, including a three-year-old child, were hurt in a gunfight, officials said. Mideast At least four Palestinian militants were killed by Israeli troops, including a pair of Hamas fighters who were preparing to attack a kibbutz after breaking out of the Gaza Strip. North Korea A North Korean delegation headed by the Stalinist state's number two leader arrived in China amid faltering attempts to resolve the standoff over the North's nuclear weapons program. EU Interior ministers from the five largest western European states agreed to adopt the use of digital fingerprinting on passports, but a second day of talks found them still deadlocked on a controversial plan to create migrant holding centres in Africa. Belarus Belarus officials said that President Alexander Lukashenko handily won the right to seek a third term after a weekend vote questioned by the West and slammed by opponents of the authoritarian leader as a "farce". US George W. Bush and John Kerry charged into the endgame of their White House race virtually deadlocked, the president leading barely in national polls but the Democrat moving up in key state battles. Sudan An African summit meeting wound up here with a joint statement rejecting any "foreign intervention" in the crisis-torn Sudanese region of Darfur and voicing strong support for the Sudanese government which is threatened with international sanctions over the situation. Thailand A German at the centre of an HIV scare possibly involving hundreds of Thai women and girls was detained by a court for overstaying his visa. Indonesia Indonesian Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir will go on trial on October 28 over a deadly hotel bombing and could face the death penalty if convicted on terrorism charges, a court official said.