Iraq Japan will keep its troops in Iraq despite the killing of a 24-year-old Japanese hostage by Islamic militants demanding a pullout, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said. Iraq Nine US marines were killed and nine others injured in Iraq's rebel heartlands west of Baghdad while conducting "increased security operations", according to a new toll issued by the US army. 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. Iraq Relatives of Sri Lankan truck driver Dinesh Dharmendran Rajaratnam appealed to his captors in Iraq to free him, saying he had been forced to work there by his Kuwaiti employer. Iraq A Polish woman held hostage by a militant group in Iraq was shown in a video on Al-Jazeera TV pleading for the withdrawal of Polish troops from the country and the release of women prisoners to save her life. US US officials decided not to raise the terrorism alert level in response to Osama bin Laden's threats against the United States in the final hours of the presidential campaign, after President George W. Bush held urgent talks with top national security aides. Ukraine Ukrainians go to the polls for a landmark presidential election fraught with East-West rivalries. SKorea The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will this week resume its investigation into South Korea's past experiments with potential ingredients for a nuclear bomb, officials said. Thailand Five people have been shot dead in separate incidents across Thailand's Muslim-majority south over the weekend as violence continued following the death of 78 detainees after a demonstration last Monday, police said. 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 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. Georgia-Abkhazia-Russia Tension mounted in Abkhazia, a breakaway territory in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, as armed men surrounded government and television buildings and armed forces went on alert, news agencies reported.