Isa Town, Bahrain - An international left-wing youth seminar that opened on the outskirts of the Bahrain capital of Manama on Friday blamed US policies in the Middle East for escalating tensions.

The two-day meeting held under the motto Youth of the Gulf and the Path to Democracy re-affirmed support for armed resistance groups fighting occupation and accused Washington of spreading sectarian tension.

The vice president of the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY), Omar al-Deeb, accused the US of carrying out major wars beyond its borders.

Islamabad - Up to 50 people were killed in three airstrikes by Pakistani and US forces and a suicide bombing carried out by suspected Taliban militants in north-west Pakistan on Friday, officials and media reports said.

Some 30 people, including a suspected al-Qaeda operative, were killed when US drones targeted suspected militant hideouts in the the tribal region that lies along Pakistan's Afghan border.

Stuttgart, Germany - Germany's powerful metalworkers union said Friday it would launch at the weekend its biggest campaign of strikes ever for higher pay in manufacturing industry.

At 24-hour-per-day factories, hundreds of workers will skip a shift Saturday.

The union, IG Metall, said it would then ramp up the strikes late Sunday by calling out tens of thousands of workers.

That would idle manufacturing plants of Volkswagen's premium-car division Audi, with 4,000 workers expected to stop working at just one Audi plant, in Ingolstadt.

Bonn, Germany - Germany's competition regulator said Friday it was extending a review of the planned takeover by a German company of a Danish sugar maker.

Nordzucker of Braunschweig, Germany, said months ago that it had agreed to purchase the sugar division of Danisco A/S of Denmark, a move that would boost its European sugar market share from 9 to 16 per cent.

Most European sugar production is derived from sugar beets.

Islamabad - Around 30 people, including a suspected al-Qaeda operative, were killed Friday in airstikes carried out by US drones in two districts of Pakistan's tribal region bordering Afghanistan, security officials said.

"A US pilotless aircraft fired two guided missiles on the house of a person named Amanullah in the village of Asori in the Mir Ali sub- district of North Waziristan," said an intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Washington - As US presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama geared up for a final weekend of campaigning, volunteering and television advertisements, voters turned out in droves to cast their ballots early in states across the country.

Both campaigns claimed an edge in the early voting stakes in key battlegrounds including Florida, Nevada, New Mexico and North Carolina, as well as absentee ballots cast in other states.