Reuters World News Highlights at 1400 GMT, Dec 02

TOP STORIES

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WASHINGTON/KABUL - The top U.S. battlefield commander said on Wednesday that President Barack Obama's 30,000-strong troop increase for the Afghan war would make a huge difference, as the White House prepared to sell the new strategy to Congress.

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ISLAMABAD - U.S. President Barack Obama's plans to boost troop numbers in Afghanistan need to ensure there is "no adverse fallout" on Pakistan, the country's foreign ministry said on Wednesday.

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CANBERRA - Australia's parliament rejected laws to set up a carbon trading scheme on Wednesday, scuttling a key climate change policy of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and providing a potential trigger for an early 2010 election.

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BRUSSELS - European Union finance ministers were near a deal to set up new super-watchdogs to police banks following the economic crisis, Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg said during negotiations in Brussels on Wednesday.

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DUBAI - Government-owned Dubai World will meet its main creditors next week to discuss a request to delay payment on $26 billion in debt that has shaken global markets and confidence in the Gulf Arab business hub.

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TEHRAN - Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards have released five Britons detained in the Gulf after their yacht apparently strayed into Iranian waters, Britain's Foreign Office said on Wednesday.

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NEW DELHI - India thinks it may be possible to cut its carbon intensity by 24 percent by 2020 compared with 2005 levels, according to provisional government estimates obtained by Reuters on Wednesday.

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MOSCOW - Islamist militants on Wednesday claimed responsibility for a bombing that derailed a Russian express train, killing 26 people, and vowed further "acts of sabotage" in a letter posted on a rebel website.

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TEHRAN - A newspaper editor and well-known critic of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been sentenced to nine years in jail for fomenting unrest after June's disputed elections, his lawyer said on Wednesday.

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ISLAMABAD - A suicide bomber blew himself up outside Pakistan's naval headquarters in Islamabad on Wednesday, killing a guard and critically wounding two navy personnel.