Conakry  - Tens of thousands of Guineans joined regional leaders Friday at the funeral of President Lansana Conte, whose death earlier this week triggered a coup.

The presidents of Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast and Liberia were amongst the crowds who packed into the national stadium in the capital Conakry.

The second-in-command of the military coup also attended the funeral and paid tribute to the man who ruled the West African for 24 years after seizing power in a bloodless coup.

Islamabad  - It will be all praise for Benazir Bhutto as Pakistan Saturday reveres its former prime minister on the anniversary of her assassination while campaigning for a third term in office.

Tens of thousands of followers were to assemble in the small town of Garhi Khuda Bakhsh in the southern province of Sindh where Bhutto lies in a family tomb.

She was killed along with three dozen other people in a suicide gun-and-bomb attack soon after she completed an election rally in the garrison town of Rawalpindi on December 27 last year.

New Delhi, Dec 26 : The Union Cabinet today gave its approval to the scheme of repair, renovation and restoration of wide variety of water bodies all over the country with an approximate cost of Rs. 6,000 crore during XI Plan period.

The scheme will cover about 23000 water bodies across the country with a culturable command area of 16.8 lakh hectares. When completed, the project will create an additional irrigation potential of 7.5 lakh hectares.

A former mayor and top congress leaders of Chandigarh requested the Punjab's Governor and UT administrator, S F Rodrigues to go on leave to allow free and fair probe of the embezzlement cases pertaining to some mega projects in the city. The Governor and his advisor are alleged of offering various projects to the big business houses by flouting all norms and rules.

Conakry, Guinea  - The leader of a military coup in Guinea Thursday gave government ministers a deadline of 24 hours to hand themselves in to an army barracks or face being hunted down.

"If tomorrow arrives without them presenting themselves, we will organize a search across the entire country," the BBC reported Captain Moussa Dadis Camara as saying during a radio address.

Camara declared himself president on Wednesday evening after parading past cheering crowds in the streets of the capital Conakry.

Dhaka - Police in Bangladesh arrested four suspected Islamist militants from the country's northern Gaibandha district Thursday, a day after the authorities beefed up security amid threats by militants against prominent political leaders.

Officials said the members of the elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion captured the activists of Jama'atul Mujahidin Bangladesh, an outlawed organization responsible for a number of past militant attacks, from a village of the district.