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BBC World News with Jonathan Weekly.

Voting has begun in East Timor where people are choosing a new president. It's the country's first election since gaining independence from Indonesia five years ago. eight candidates are contesting the election which is for a successor to President S. G.. He is not standing again. Jonathan Head reports from the capital D.

People started arriving at polling stations while it was still dark this morning well before they opened. Many East Timorese are disappointed with the leadership of their country in its first five years as an independent nation. But that does not appear to have diminished their desire to vote. None of the eight candidates has the chrism and renown OG, the man they are seeking to replace but his once heroic reputation is not what he was after the violence that tore the capital apart last year.

There has been widespread condemnation here in Britain of the decision to allow the 15 sailors and marines held by Iran to sell their stories to the media. Families of military personnel killed in Iraq have called it shameful. A former Defense Minister of the opposition Conservative Party, /, said the decision was undignified.

I think, like many people would be thinking, that the issue on Sunday of the parents and relatives of the young men and women killed recently in Iraq of the / fighting hand in hand against the Taliban in Afghanistan that needs to be an absolutely fundamental rethink.

The Defense Ministry in London said that the general ban on military personnel selling stories would remain in place but that the circumstances in this case were exceptional.

The Iranian Foreign Minister M has demanded that Iraq help secure the release of the five Iranians held since January by American troops in Iraq. An Iranian news agency quoted Mr. M as saying he has sent his Iraq counterpart a letter warning that Teheran could have problems helping Iraq if no action was taken.

Iraq has imposed a total ban on vehicle traffic in Baghdad as the country prepares to mourn the fourth anniversary of followers of Saddam Hussein. On Sunday at least 18 people were killed and more than 28 injured in a huge car bomb explosion in the town of M. south of Baghdad. J. reports from Baghdad.

More grief and / in M. The streets were shaking in the middle of the morning as a massive blast went off in the town's center. M is mainly a Shiite town but it's in the troubled belt of territory around the southern side of Baghdad where Sunni and Shiite communities are mixed. Further to the south, American helicopters were patrolling the skies over the Shiite city of D.. It was the third day of / operation to raid the city center of Shiite militiamen believed to belong to the M. Army, which follows the radical cleric M. He has called for massive demonstrations to be held on Monday to mark the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.

World News from the BBC.

Italian Prime Minister RP has joined the international condemnation of the killing of an Afghan reporter by the Taliban. The man, A, has been acting as a translator for an Italian journalist when they were seized by the group last month. The Italian was freed after about two weeks when the Afghan government released five Taliban prisoners. M reports from Milan.


Three weeks ago Italy welcomed back /, Italian journalist freed after the Afghan government agreed to release five Taliban prisoners. Mr. M was returned home to describe seeing his drivers to capitation and urge the Italian government to do what it could to prevent his translator meeting a similar fate. When hearing his colleague’s death, he said he was shattered since it was echoed by the editorial staff of his newspaper Republica. This shows the world the true faith, the Taliban, Mr. M said, they are simply killers.

A cathedral in the Netherlands has unveiled its new / glass window which includes an image of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. A bishop blessed the window at a ceremony at the cathedral I. The penal, the pane contained an image that shows a plane crashing into one of the twin towers. The artist who made it said it depicted hell on Earth.

In a unique rickshaw, the Queen of the holy town N in India has paid, what has by tradition, the only visit to the famous G Temple she is allowed to make in her lifetime. The last three decades the Queen, or Maharani, has lived in a palace barely two hundred meters away but only on Sunday was she taken to the G Temple by her husband, who tied a sari round her head, sanction to her to warship the shrine. Several thousand people turned out to witness the event but the Maharani was in P, must therefore be kept from public view.

For the moment that is the latest BBC.