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Afghan officials say they’ve retaken full control of a building from which Taliban insurgentslaunched an attack on the election commission compound in Kabul a week before thepresidential election. David Loyn reports from Kabul.

The attackers hid their weapons under the old protecting folds of women’s burqas andoverpowered guards in a building not far from the election commission before opening fire. Ittook security forces four hours to kill them all. By then there were fires burning in the largeelection commission compound and there may have been some damages to ballot 1 boxes.This was the fifth serious attack in Afghanistan in eight days, almost all election-related. Thisafternoon the election commission had planned to make a major announcement on howmany polling stations would be prevented from opening because of worsening security in manyparts of the country.

The US Secretary of State John Kerry has abruptly 2 cancelled his return home from the MiddleEast, changing his flight plan to go to Paris to meet his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov onSunday. They are expected to discuss an American proposal to end the crisis in Ukraine, whichcalls for Russia to halt its military build-up on the border. Bentham Claude reports fromWashington.

News that the top diplomats 3 from the US and Russia are to meet follows an unexpected phoneconversation on Friday evening between President Barack Obama and President Vladimir Putin.The Kremlin initiated 4 the call to discuss ways of stabilising the situation in Ukraine, a surprisemove after weeks of escalating 5 tensions between Russia and the West. It may be a sign oftentative progress towards a diplomatic solution, though the White House says Russia mustfirst pull back the troops that have been deployed 6 along the border with Ukraine.

A leading Ukrainian politician, Vitali Klitschko, has announced that he will not run forpresidential in elections in May, but will instead support a prominent businessman and formergovernment minister Petro Poroshenko. Mr Klitschko, a former world boxing champion, told agathering of his Udar party that democratic forces, as he put it, needed to unify 7 behind asingle candidate.

“I’ve always said this has to be a candidate who enjoys the strongest public support with thegreatest chance of victory. Today this candidate in my opinion is Petro Poroshenko.”

A suicide car bomber 8 in Lebanon has hit an army checkpoint on the outskirts 9 of the town ofArsal near the border with Syria. The Lebanese army says that three soldiers were killed andfour people were wounded. The town of Arsal has become one of the main refuges in Lebanonfor Syrians fleeing from the conflict in their home country. Tensions have further increasedthere as fighting just over the border has intensified 10 with Syrian government forces trying tocut off vital rebel supply lines from Lebanon.

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The National Assembly in Cuba has approved a bill aimed at making the Communist-run islandmore attractive to foreign investors 11. The bill, which halves taxes on profits from 30% to 15%,is seen as a key part of President Raul Castro’s reform package started more than five yearsago. Sarah Rainsford reports Havana.

This extraordinary session of parliament was called by Raul Castro, a sign that Cuba wantsmore foreign capital to start flowing quickly. The economy is growing at just over 2% now. Soministers told parliament the aim was to boost that, helping 12 to make Cuban socialismprosperous and sustainable. They stressed that the government was not selling the country orgoing back to the past, but they also made clear that foreign funding is vital. To bring it in,Cuba’s offering investors incentives 13 including eight years’ free of profit tax and no personalincome tax.

For the first time Chinese and Australian ships investigating aerial sightings of possible debrisfor the missing Malaysian airliner 14 have retrieved 15 a number of objects from the water. None ofthe items recovered so far has been confirmed as related to Flight MH370.

The UN special envoy 16 on education, Gordon Brown, has announced a pilot project in Pakistanwith the aim of preventing girls from being forced into marriage. Speaking in Islamabad, MrBrown, a former British prime minister, said child marriage free zones will be set up in whichteachers and girls will be encouraged to work together to combat forced early marriage. He saidfunding would be available and depriving girls of education was not acceptable in the modernworld.

“We want just part of that to make sure that there’s no child marriage. We want to make surethat child labour is outlawed 17. We want to make sure that the case of Malala and others whowere girls discriminated 18 against because they wanted to go to school will not berepeated.”Gordon Brown