Iraq Eight US marines were killed in action in Iraq's rebel heartlands, as a car bomb tore through the Baghdad offices of an Arabic television station leaving at least seven people dead and scores wounded. Mideast Former Palestinian premier Mahmud Abbas urged Palestinian forces to unite, pledging loyalty to Yasser Arafat, as he moved to the political centre stage with the strongman sick in hospital. US President George W. Bush held urgent talks with top national security aides after Osama bin Laden threatened the United States in the final hours of the presidential campaign. EU Rocco Buttiglione, who brought EU affairs to a halt with his views that homosexuality is a sin and that women should stay home looking after children, said that he was stepping down as candidate to become the new European commissioner for justice. Afghanistan US forces in Afghanistan said they believed Osama bin Laden, whose appearance in a video on Al-Jazeera television was his first in 13 months, is still roaming along the frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Afghanistan A breakaway Taliban group claiming to hold three UN workers threatened to execute them unless foreign troops withdraw from Afghanistan and condemn its "invasion" by US-led forces. Ukraine Ukraine stepped up security nationwide as it braced for a landmark presidential election fraught with East-West rivalries certain to impact the course of one of Europe's largest states for years ahead. Botswana Queues of voters in diamond-rich Botswana waited patiently on to cast their ballots in elections that are expected to hand victory to the party in power since independence in 1966 in one of Africa's most stable countries. Thailand Hundreds of Muslims will be prosecuted after a demonstration that ended in the deaths of 87 people detained by authorities in southern Thailand, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said in a move which could further raise tensions in the region.