PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Army guards shot and killed three suspected suicide bombers as they tried to enter a sprawling military firing range in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, police said.

Four soldiers were wounded in the attack, which showed the persistent threat insurgents pose to Pakistan’s security forces, especially those operating near the Afghan border.

Police official Akhtar Ali Shah said the assailants refused to stop for a check at the entrance to the range in the northwestern city of Mardan, prompting the guards to open fire.

The men wore suicide jackets that detonated when they were shot at, wounding the soldiers. Police had collected body parts of the attackers for DNA test, Shah said.

Mardan, which lies about 30 miles (50 kilometers) away from the northwest’s main city of Peshawar, has witnessed several attacks blamed on Taliban and other Islamist militant groups that have proliferated along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.

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MELBOURNE (AFP) – Australian soprano Deborah Cheetham chokes with emotion as the crowd rises for a thunderous ovation at a preview of “Pecan Summer”, the first opera for an all-Aboriginal cast.

It is the culmination of a long and painful personal journey for this diminutive woman from the Yorta-Yorta clan, who was stolen from her mother at three months and raised by white parents who concealed her origins.

Cheetham was in her twenties before she discovered the truth. The ensuing process of self-discovery became intertwined with her passion for opera.

“After dragging myself out of an identity meltdown my response was to create something positive,” she says.

Cheetham’s composition tells the story of Australia’s “Stolen Generations”, thousands of Aboriginal children taken from their parents under acts of parliament, in a policy at its height between 1869 and 1969.

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BEIJING (AFP) – A toxic pollution spill from a mine operated by China’s top gold producer Zijin Mining Group has spread to a second province, threatening the fishing industry there, state media said Tuesday.

Poisonous waste water from the copper mine in Fujian province has contaminated the Ting river — a major waterway in the country’s southeast — and has now flowed downstream into Guangdong province, the China Daily said.

The pollution “will pose a big challenge to local fish farming”, a notice from Guangdong environmental authorities said, according to the China Daily.

The report came as Zijin, China’s third-largest copper producer, issued a statement apologising for the July 3 mishap — which killed off nearly 1,900 tonnes of fish — and its “improper handling” of information about the spill.

Zijin said the securities regulator had launched an investigation into the company over possible violation of information disclosure rules.

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JUBA, Sudan (AFP) – The deputy head of a key opposition party in south Sudan and other top officials defected to the ruling party on Monday, less than six months before a referendum on independence for the region.

Charles Kisanga, the deputy chairman of the breakaway Sudan Peoples? Liberation Movement-Democratic Change (SPLM-DC), said he had returned to the mainstream SPLM.

“We are going to pull out of the party and will all be returning to the mother,” said Kisanga. speaking alongside other defecting members at SPLM headquarters in the southern capital of Juba.

The SPLM-DC is headed by former Sudanese foreign minister Lam Akol, who was the only challenger to south Sudan’s president and SPLM leader Salva Kiir in elections held in April.

Kisanga accused Akol of having supplied arms and cash to fund militias to destabilise the south.

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YANGON, Myanmar – Myanmar held a low-key ceremony Monday to mark the anniversary of the 1947 assassination of independence hero Gen. Aung San — father of detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Suu Kyi, who is under house arrest, did not attend the Martyr’s Day ceremony, which marks the deadly attack by a political rival on Aung San along with six Cabinet ministers and two officials, six months before Myanmar’s independence from Britain.

The anniversary is remembered each year in an official ceremony at a mausoleum near the foot of famous Shwedagon pagoda in Yangon, but the ruling military has gradually downgraded its scope since Suu Kyi rose to prominence in a 1988 pro-democracy uprising that was crushed by the junta.

She headed the country’s main opposition party, which was recently forced to disband after refusing to take part in an election the junta has planned for this year.

At the ceremony, flags were flown at half-staff at the mausoleum as officials placed flowers at the tomb, and families of the slain leaders and diplomats joined the tightly guarded wreath-laying ceremony.

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