Afghan election authorities cancelled 1.3 million votes in last month's parliamentary election, nearly a quarter of the 5.6 million ballots cast, the country's top electoral officer said Wednesday.

"The total number of ballots poured into the boxes was 5,600,000, the valid vote is 4,265,347, and the invalid vote is around 1,300,000," said Fazil Ahmad Manawi, head of the Independent Election Commission (IEC).

Al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden is living comfortably in a house in northwest Pakistan close to his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, CNN on Monday quoted a NATO official as saying.

The Saudi-born militant wanted for the September 11 attacks on the United States nine years ago is being protected by local people and "some members of the Pakistani intelligence services," the television network said.

French high school students clashed with riot police Monday, truckers blocked roads and filling stations ran out of fuel as protests escalated against plans to raise the retirement age to 62.

Police fired tear gas at youths who set a car on fire, smashed bus stops and hurled rocks outside a school in a Paris suburb blocked by students protesting against a move that is central to President Nicolas Sarkozy's reform agenda.

Groups of insurgents stormed two government buildings in Russia's volatile Chechnya region on Tuesday, killing police officers and several employees of parliament, Russian news agencies reported.

One group of insurgents set off an explosive device at the entrance of the parliament complex in Grozny, while two others ran into the building, sparking a shootout with police, RIA Novosti reported, citing a law enforcement source.

The death toll from a coal mine blast in China has risen to 30, officials said Monday, as hopes faded for seven miners still trapped -- prompting anger from web users wishing for a Chile-style rescue.

Saturday's accident in the central province of Henan was the first major incident in China's notoriously dangerous mines since the dramatic rescue last week of 33 miners trapped for more than two months in Chile, watched worldwide.

A China coal mine accident killed 20 miners and left another 17 missing underground Saturday, the government said, in the latest tragedy highlighting appalling safety conditions in the nation's mines.

The mine in the central province of Henan was hit by a "sudden coal and gas outburst" as 276 miners were at work below ground, the national work safety agency said on its website.

The last of the Chilean miners, the foreman who held them together when they were feared lost, was raised from the depths of the earth Wednesday night — a joyous ending to a 69-day ordeal that riveted the world. No one has ever been trapped so long and survived.

Luis Urzua ascended smoothly through 2,000 feet of rock, completing a 22 1/2-hour rescue operation that unfolded with remarkable speed and flawless execution. Before a jubilant crowd of about 2,000 people, he became the 33rd miner to be rescued.

Wild celebrations erupted Wednesday as the first of 33 men trapped underground for 10 weeks in a collapsed Chile mine triumphantly returned to the surface in a landmark rescue operation.

A powerful light danced across the twilight sky when 31-year-old Florencio Avalos stepped out of a special steel rescue cage and breathed in the fresh air for the first time in 69 days.

France's Prime Minister Francois Fillon on Tuesday ruled out making new concessions to strikers protesting against the raising of the retirement age from 60 to 62, lawmakers said.

"We have reached the limit of what is possible" in amending the bill, currently under debate in the upper house Senate, lawmakers quoted Prime Minister Francois Fillon as telling them at a meeting.

Four Italian soldiers were killed and a fifth seriously injured in Afghanistan when a bomb blew up their vehicle on Saturday, the defense ministry announced.

The soldiers were ambushed as they returned from a mission in the Gulistan valley in the southwestern province of Farah, General Massimo Fogari, head of the press service at the defense chief of staff told the television network Tg 24.