Streaming through Bangkok in a convoy of trucks, vans and motorbikes, anti-government protesters this morning headed for a key military base where Thailands prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has been holed up in a temporary command centre.

The drug wars in Mexico took an ominous turn over the weekend when a US consulate employee and her husband were killed as they left a children's birthday party in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico's most violent city. Only minutes earlier gunmen also killed the Mexican husband of another member of the consular staff and wounded his two children.

France signalled its displeasure with President Sarkozy yesterday in the first round of regional elections, which are expected to end with a clean sweep for the opposition Socialist Party.

Sri Lanka’s main Tamil party has renounced its demand for an independent Tamil homeland, but vowed to launch a Gandhi-style civil disobedience campaign for greater regional autonomy.

Independent election monitors in Iraq have raised significant concerns over the conduct and fairness of last week’s national poll.

A spoof television report that President Mikheil Saakashvili had been assassinated in a new Russian invasion of Georgia led to mass panic and furious opposition protests yesterday.

The leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland resisted calls for his resignation yesterday, despite admitting that he took part in meetings where the victims of a paedophile priest were forced to take a vow of silence.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland faces her first big international test as the EU’s top diplomat this week after flying into the Middle East to plead for peace talks to start despite a dramatic increase of tension in the region.

Further damaging revelations about the collapse of Lehman Brothers are being held up in the US courts by Barclays.

Blood trickles from a gash below Paul Bedard’s left ear, a wound that could have been worse considering that he incurred it while kissing an 8ft (2.5m) alligator under water.

A British man and woman facing jail in Dubai for kissing in public have vowed to fight the charges and clear their names.

The warning on the wall was written in blood. “All who fight us shall face this same fate,” it stated in swirling, Urdu script, ochre red with the passing of sun and rain.

“Well . . . I can definitely feel a bit of adrenalin,” says Yukari Sendo, savouring the mobile phone ringtone like a fine wine, “but it really doesn’t make me want to do any housework.”

A date for your diary: Leonardo da Vinci predicted that the world would end on November 1, 4006, according to a Vatican researcher.

Its pearl-white beaches and balmy waters have earned Acapulco the title of Mexico’s Pacific Jewel. But just as tourists began flocking to its shores for the start of the spring holiday season, the idyll was shattered with the drug-related murders of 17 people.