The king's role is mainly ceremonial

The son of former king Norodom Sihanouk, King Sihamoni was sworn in as monarch on 29 October 2004. The former king had abdicated because of poor health.

Born in 1953, he studied in Czechoslovakia. He left Cambodia for France after the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979. He is a trained classical ballet dancer.

Cambodia's kings once enjoyed a semi-divine status; today, the monarch's role is mainly ceremonial.

Prime minister: Hun Sen

Hun Sen, one of the world's longest-serving prime ministers, has been in power in various coalitions since 1985.

He was re-elected by parliament in July 2004 after nearly a year of political stalemate. His Cambodian People's Party (CPP) won general elections in 2003, but without enough seats for it to rule alone.

Cambodia's veteran premier Hun Sen

It finally struck a deal with the royalist Funcinpec party, which at the time was led by Prince Norodom Ranariddh, in June 2004.

Hun Sen is no stranger to controversy. He seized power from his then co-prime minister, Prince Ranariddh, in 1997. More recently, some Western countries have said his rule has become increasingly authoritarian.

Born in 1952, Hun Sen joined the Communist Party in the late 1960s and, for a time, was a member of the Khmer Rouge. He has denied accusations that he was once a top official within the movement, saying he was only an ordinary soldier.

During the Pol Pot regime in the late 1970s he joined anti-Khmer Rouge forces based in Vietnam.

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Cambodia is burdened with the legacy of decades of conflict; unexploded munitions - thought to number in the millions - continue to kill and maim civilians, despite an ongoing de-mining drive.

Only now is the country beginning to put the mechanism in place to bring those responsible for the "killing fields" to justice. Cambodia and the UN have agreed to set up a tribunal to try the surviving leaders of the genocide years.

The tribunal held its first public hearing - a bail request by one of the defendants - in November 2007.

Boats race past the Royal Palace during the annual water festival

Trials are expected to start in 2008 and last for three years.

In pursuit of a rural utopia, the Khmer Rouge abolished money and private property and ordered city dwellers into the countryside to cultivate the fields.

The effects can still be seen today, with around 70% of Cambodia's workforce employed in subsistence farming.

The Mekong River provides fertile, irrigated fields for rice production.

Exports of clothing generate most of Cambodia's foreign exchange and tourism is also important.

The imposing temple complex at Angkor, built between the ninth and 13th centuries by Khmer kings, is a UN heritage site and a big draw for visitors.

Well over half of Cambodia is forested, but illegal logging is robbing the country of millions of dollars of badly-needed revenue.

International watchdog Global Witness claims top officials are involved in the trade. The environment is also suffering, with topsoil erosion and flooding becoming prevalent.

The spread of HIV/Aids is another threat; however, public health campaigns have reduced the rate of infection.

Mr Kim's Sunshine Policy led to improved relations with North Korea

North Korea has sent condolences for the death of the former South Korean president, Kim Dae-jung, the North's official news agency has said.

Pyongyang also said it would like to send a delegation to pay respects at Mr Kim's funeral in Seoul.

Relations between the countries have been poor since President Lee Myung-bak took office in the South last year.

But the North has said it wants to ease border restrictions and re-open a joint industrial park near the border.

North Korea's state news agency, KCNA, carried the brief message from the North's leader, Kim Jong-il.

"I express my deep condolences to Mrs Ri Hui Ho and other bereaved family members," he said.

"Though he passed away to our regret, the feats he performed to achieve national reconciliation and realize the desire for reunification will remain long with the nation."

A long-time aide to the former president also said Kim Jong-il had sent condolences and had announced he wanted to send envoys to the funeral.

"The delegation will carry a wreath sent by Chairman Kim Jong-Il," the aide, Park Jie-won, told reporters.

Seoul's unification ministry, which handles cross-border relations, said it had not received word of the delegation from Pyongyang. But President Lee Myung-bak's office said it would not object to the visit.

No date has been set for Mr Kim's funeral.

History maker

Kim Dae-jung made the first visit by a South Korean leader to the North in 2000, as part of his "Sunshine Policy" of reconciliation to try to reunite the divided peninsula.

The friendly overtures from the North follow a visit to Pyongyang earlier this month by former US President Bill Clinton.

He held talks with the reclusive Kim Jong-il and secured the release of two American reporters jailed for entering North Korea without permission.

Mr Kim, who died on Tuesday, was being treated for pneumonia.

The former leader had spent his life pursuing democracy and reunification with the North.

He survived several attempts on his life and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000.

Kim Dae-jung's date of birth is unclear. According to his presidential website he was born on 6 January 1924, but it is reported that he later changed this to 3 December 1925 to avoid conscription during the Japanese colonial period.

Mr Kim was branded a dangerous radical during South Korea's decades of military rule.

He served as president from 1998 to 2003.

He described the biggest achievement of his presidency as the landmark summit with Kim Jong-il in 2000. It paved the way for reconciliation and earned him a Nobel prize later that year.

New violence hits Afghan capital
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Police surrounded the bank before overpowering the gunmen

Fresh violence has erupted in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on the eve of the country's presidential election.

Explosions and gunfire were heard as troops battled and killed three attackers who raided a bank close to the presidential compound.

The Taliban have vowed to disrupt the election and said they were behind the raid, but this could not be confirmed.

The government has asked the media not to report violence on election day to avoid deterring people from voting.

But the move has been heavily criticised, and journalists said they would ignore it.

"It is a democratic day, a very important day for our independence, [and] this type of ban does not sit well with democratic principles," Rahimullah Samander, president of the Afghanistan Independent Journalists' Association, told AFP news agency.


Aid can make a huge difference in Afghanistan - but it has to be well-spent
Oxfam statement

Targeting Afghans, not 'the enemy'
Herat fears post-election instability
Q&A: Afghan election
Afghan views on election security

On Tuesday more than 20 people were killed in attacks across the country, including a suicide blast in Kabul.

Meanwhile local officials in the central Ghazni province said that international forces had mistakenly killed four Afghan police overnight near the town of the same name.

The governor of Ghazni, Mohammad Osman Osmani, said other police were wounded in the attack, which was aimed at insurgents in the area who had been carrying out rocket attacks on the town.

In the northern Kunduz province, local officials told the BBC that two police had been killed and eight taken by the Taliban, although some of the eight may have already been working for the insurgents.

'Wasteful'

In Wednesday's attack, armed police forced their way into a central Kabul branch of the Pashtany bank after it was stormed by at least three gunmen.

They were then seen dragging at least three bodies out, and appeared to be in control of the building.

Soldiers guard ballot boxes in Kabul (18 August 2009)
The Taliban have vowed to disrupt the elections on Thursday

The Afghan Interior Ministry said the raid had been carried out by "terrorists", although it had earlier described them as "robbers" or "thieves".

The presidential election on Thursday will be the second since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001.

Hamid Karzai is tipped to be re-elected president in Thursday's polls, although correspondents say he could face a run-off against one of his strongest challengers, ex-Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah. Several dozen candidates are in the race.

The Taliban says it will use violence to disrupt the poll, prompting the Afghan government to call for a media blackout on any attacks from 0600 to 2000 on polling day.

"All domestic and international media agencies are requested to refrain from broadcasting any incident of violence during the election process from 6am to 8pm on 20 August," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Siamak Herawi, a spokesman for President Karzai, said the blackout would prevent the media from having a "negative impact".

"If something happens, this will prevent them from exaggerating it, so that people will not be frightened to come out and vote."

But journalists and activists said Afghans had a right to know about the security threats they faced.

Mr Samander, of the Afghan Independent Journalists' Association, told Reuters news agency: "We condemn such moves to deprive people from accessing news."
Afghan journalists report on a militant attack in Kabul on 27 April 2008
Afghanistan's media has flourished in the last eight years

The New York-based organisation Human Rights Watch, called the government's position an "unreasonable violation of press freedoms".

Aid agency Oxfam also delivered a clear warning on the eve of polling, saying that the elections must be accompanied by major reforms in governance and aid if Afghanistan is to prosper.

Oxfam said that, despite massive investment, one-third of Afghans still faced hunger and poverty.

The organisation said that billions of dollars of aid have been channelled into Afghanistan by foreign governments since 2001, but these have been "woefully insufficient" to deal with the legacy of three decades of conflict.

Too few Afghans were benefitting from the money and much of it had been "ineffective, unco-ordinated or wasteful", Oxfam said.

The group said the election of a new government had to be accompanied by major reforms. "Aid can make a huge difference in Afghanistan - but it has to be well-spent," it said.

The moment one of the bombs exploded

Truck bombs and a barrage of mortars have killed at least 75 people and hurt at least 310 in central Baghdad in the deadliest series of attacks in months.

One vehicle exploded outside the foreign ministry near the perimeter of the heavily guarded government Green Zone, reportedly leaving a huge crater.

Another blast went off close to the finance ministry building.

While Baghdad is often hit by attacks, it is unusual for them to penetrate such well-fortified areas of the city.


Everybody on the street was going crazy. Nobody knew what was going on
Mustapha Muhie

Since Iraqi forces took over responsibility for security in the city in late June, most attacks have targeted poor Shia neighbourhoods, says the BBC's Natalia Antelava in Baghdad.

The level of violence in Iraq has fallen since the peaks of 2006 and 2007, but bomb attacks remain commonplace.

'Terrified'

Hospital and security officials say 75 people were killed and 310 injured in Wednesday morning's apparently co-ordinated attacks.

Two huge bombs - believed to have been hidden in trucks - went off, sending plumes of black smoke into the sky.

Map

In pictures: Baghdad attacks

The biggest blast was near the foreign ministry, just outside the Green Zone. It was powerful enough to break windows at the parliament building inside the Zone which houses government and diplomatic buildings, reports said.

It left a crater 3m (10 feet) deep and 10m in diameter, and left behind the smouldering wreckage of cars outside, reports said.

"The windows of the foreign ministry shattered, slaughtering the people inside," Asia, a ministry employee, told Reuters news agency.

"I could see ministry workers, journalists and security guards among the dead," she said.

Minutes earlier, another blast close to the finance ministry in another hitherto relatively safe area of the city is reported to have affected a raised highway nearby.

At least four other explosions went off in other parts of Baghdad, including the Bayaa district of southern Baghdad.

Several mortars fell inside the Green Zone itself.

"Everybody on the street was going crazy," Mustapha Muhie, who works near the Green Zone as an administrator, told the BBC.

"Nobody knew what was going on. Everybody was just trying to get to their cars, just trying to get home - and that's what I did. There was so much traffic in the streets, and the checkpoints. They were searching every car, stopping everybody and asking stuff. A road that takes me 10 minutes to get home today took me an hour.

"My whole family was really upset, they were terrified. And everybody is scared that things will get worse, just like before."

An Iraqi army spokesman said two al-Qaeda members had been arrested in a Baghdad district in connection with the attacks.

Clear targets

The wave of explosions occurred just as Prime Minister Nouri Maliki was about to arrive at a nearby hotel to hold a news conference, which was cancelled.

ANALYSIS
Natalia Antelava
Natalia Antelava
BBC News, Baghdad

These are unusual attacks - in the last few weeks, we have seen explosions in Baghdad, but these attacks occurred in some of the supposedly safest neighbourhoods of the city.

For many people, these attacks confirm their worst fears over the withdrawal of US troops from cities across Iraq at the end of June and handing over of the security situation to Iraqi forces. A lot of people before the withdrawal were saying they were very fearful that attacks would rise.

The government said they were in full control - but attacks like these, in what should be a very safe, very well-protected area of Baghdad will certainly shed some very serious doubts on these assurances.

There have been no official accusations about who is behind the attacks, or claims of responsibility.

But in the past, the government has blamed al-Qaeda linked Sunni insurgents - and they might again be blamed for these attacks, given that government buildings were the clear target, our correspondent says.

The violence comes exactly six years after one of the first major attacks in Iraq after the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

On 19 August 2003, the UN headquarters in Baghdad was hit by a suicide truck bomb, killing 22 people in what was the most deadly attack up until that point since the US-led invasion earlier that year.

The date was chosen for the UN's inaugural World Humanitarian Day.

The UN hopes the event will focus attention on aid workers and increase support for their role.

In the past six years, tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed in the violence that followed.