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Cotabato City, Philippines  - Two Muslim secessionist rebels were killed in a clash with government troops in the southern Philippines, an army spokesman said Thursday.

Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Ponce said the fighting erupted Wednesday when Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) guerrillas attacked an army encampment in Mamasapano town in Maguindanao province, 960 kilometres south of Manila.

Ponce said the soldiers repulsed the guerrillas with mortar fire, killing two of them in the ensuing firefight.

Washington, July 2 : Two University of Hawaii astronomers have found a binary star-disk system in which each star is surrounded by the kind of dust disk that is frequently the precursor of a planetary system, which makes them solar systems in the making.

The astronomers in question are doctoral student Rita Mann and Dr. Jonathan Williams, who used the Submillimeter Array on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, to make the observations.

A binary star system consists of two stars bound together by gravity that orbit a common center of gravity.

New Delhi, July 1 : India favours greater and continuing international focus and attention on developmental and security issues concerning Afghanistan and its neighbours, saying this is necessary and would be helpful in the long term.

Hong Kong  - Police forcibly removed a group of 130 pro-democracy protestors early Thursday who staged a sit-in outside Hong Kong's government offices.

The demonstrators, including radical legislator Leung Kwok-heung, staged the sit-in after an annual anti-government march through central Hong Kong on July 1 joined by tens of thousands.

Singing songs and chanting slogans, the group staged their sit-in at the point where the march ended and refused to leave until they met Hong Kong's Beijing-appointed leader Donald Tsang.

Tegucigalpa  - The Honduran government temporarily restricted some civil rights on Wednesday as the dispute over the coup against president Manuel Zelaya intensified.

Interim president Roberto Micheletti issued a decree on Wednesday limiting the freedom of movement and freedom of assembly for the next 72 hours. The limits on civil rights will only apply at night. Checks on those entering the country will also become stricter.

A curfew imposed immediately after the toppling of President Manuel Zelaya on Sunday was extended until the weekend.

London, July 2 : A killer surgical drug was reportedly among the cocktail of prescription drugs found at Michael Jackson's LA home after he passed away on June 25.

Propofol, dubbed "the milk of amnesia", which is used to anaesthetise patients before surgeries, was said to have emerged at the singer's mansion.

Experts warned the white fluid, also called Diprivan, could bring on cardiac arrest, from which Jackson apparently died, if mixed with narcotic painkillers like Demerol, allegedly given to the star before his death.