Two of the soldiers were part of a raid in the tribal area of Garmat Ali, north of the city, to "apprehend individuals involved in terrorist activities in Basra," British spokesman Major Charlie Burbridge said.

He said one soldier was killed in exchange of fire during the raid which resulted in the detention of two "suspected terrorists" while another soldier was wounded but was "not in a serious condition".

The soldier's death brought to 114 the British military's losses in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.

Two other soldiers were wounded when a roadside bomb on the road to Al-Zubair, southwest of Basra, exploded next to their vehicle lightly wounding them.

The incidents are part of a pattern of increased instability in the south which had once been considered relatively calm compared with restive Sunni central and western Iraq.

British Major General John Cooper, head of coalition troops in southern Iraq, told AFP on Thursday that the coalition forces had to work "more on Basra", especially on the city's police.

British troops have often clashed with the Basra police. Commanders say they have been infiltrated by militiamen loyal to Shiite radical leader Moqtada al-Sadr.

Last month, British Defence Secretary Des Browne called for a security crackdown in Basra on the lines of one currently being implemented in the capital.

But the Baghdad operation has so far failed to stem raging violence.

Three people were killed and 32 wounded in a bomb attack in a tyre market in the city's Karrada district Sunday, police said.

The confessionally mixed province of Diyala, northeast of Baghdad, was the scene of a dramatic assault when a large group of insurgents stormed the main hospital of the provincial capital Baquba and freed several of their wounded comrades.

Four hospital guards were killed in the operation that targeted the third floor, which is reserved for detainees. As police arrived at the hospital the insurgents set off a bomb in the front of the building and in the ensuing confusion made their escape.

Elsewhere in Diyala, a former official of ousted president
Saddam Hussein's Baath party was killed in a drive-by shooting along with his son and a woman bystander. Two other civilians were killed in separate shootings in the province.

In the northern oil city of Kirkuk, gunmen killed two brothers who ran a barber shop for cutting hair in Western fashions, police said.

Two truck drivers were killed and a third was kidnapped in an ambush on a convoy on the road between Kirkuk and the central city of Tikrit.

South of Baghdad, an Iraqi soldier was killed while attempting to remove a bomb placed in a cafe in the town of Iskandiriyah.

Five corpses were also found across the country.

Gunmen who seized 29 people, including top sports officials, in a daylight raid on a Baghdad club Saturday released six of their hostages Sunday.

Those freed included Nashat Maher, former head of military sports and now an advisor to the Iraqi Olympic Committee, the committee's office manager Mohammed al-Habash told AFP.

"He (Maher) was found lying by the side of the road, blindfolded, in an eastern district of the capital," Habash said.

The coach of the Talaba football was also released, along with a driver and three other guards, he added.

Among those still held are the Olympic Committee's chairman Ahmed al-Hejea, its secretary general Amr Abdel Jabbar, the head of the Iraqi taekwondo federation, Jamal Abdel Karim, and the head of water sports, Saeb al-Hakim.

The committee had been holding a meeting at the time of Saturday's raid by gunmen dressed in military uniforms.

Police sources told Reuters that the town was first hit by a series of mortars, then gunmen armed with rifles made their way through the market, opening fire on civilians. The victims are reported to be mainly Shia Muslims. Iraqi police sealed off the area.

It's considered to be one the bloodiest raids in recent months and it came on the anniversary of a coup staged in 1968 by Saddam Hussein's Baath party.

Mahmoudiya is described as a religiously mixed area and is also the town where, in March, six Americans troops are alleged to have raped and murdered a 14-year-old girl and killed her parents and six-year-old sister. The troops have been charged in the incident.

Attack continues wave of sectarian violence

The raid is believed to be part of a sectarian wave of violence in Iraq between Sunnis and Shias, violence that has become the main security threat in the country. But it was unclear on Monday who carried out the attack.

The attack came one day after a suicide bomber set off explosives in a cafe in northern Iraq, leaving 26 people dead and 22 wounded. Also on Sunday, gunmen kidnapped a top oil ministry official.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez arrived in Baghdad Monday to meet with Iraqi officials.

U.S. President George W. Bush pledged to send more U.S. officials to Baghdad to help the Iraqi government promote the national economy. Bush said he believes developing the economy will help restore stability in the country.

The trick to making the study meaningful was making sure the test subjects didn't know what was going on, Dunning said, noting that the generally high IQ of Cornell students made cheating a real possibility.

"The figures we used were chosen so we knew the people weren't just lying or tricking us," Dunning told LiveScience. "We also tracked automatic, unconscious eye movements which were out of their control."

Not only did participants routinely see the figure that produced favorable results, their eye motions indicated that they were never aware of the alternate option being available.

Other scientists who have studied the connection between belief and physiological reactions in the eye, now supported by Dunning's research, point to its possibilities in the world of positive thinking and self-motivation.

"Determining whether a person walking towards you is smiling or smirking, how close the finish line seems in a race or how loud a partner - a wife, husband, lover - is yelling during an argument," Dunning gave as examples that could arise in life. "Could we interpret ambiguous situations towards our expectations and hopes and away from our fears? That is the ultimate question."

The study will be published later this year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

The decision - to be officially announced by the CPS at midday - is set to be greeted with dismay by the family of Mr De Menezes.

Speaking this morning, Asad Rehman from the Justice4Jean campaign group, said the family would be "very, very disappointed if no officers are held to account for their actions".

"The family do not think health and safety regulations are an appropriate way to hold the police accountable over this issue," he said.

"They will be considering all their legal options to ensure that somebody is answerable in a court of law."

Mr de Menezes, 27, was shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder at point blank range by officers from the Met's C019 firearms unit after he boarded a train at Stockwell station.

He had been watched by police and military surveillance officers leaving his flat in nearby Tulse Hill and followed on to a bus towards the station.

The IPCC report has yet to be released, but it is thought to list a series of mistakes made by police, starting with his identification as a suspect after he left his flat.

Earlier reports said the two officers who fired the fatal shots and Commander Cressida Dick, who was running the armed operation on July 22 last year, could face manslaughter charges.

Hector Rozas, an engineer form Mexico state, demanded the government respect the poor, saying the protestors were only asking for transparency and openness about the election.

According to results published by Mexico's official electoral body, the Federal Electoral Agency (IFE), Obrador lost to the National Action Party (PAN) candidate Felipe Calderon by just 244,000 votes, or 0.58 percentage points.

However Obrador said that electoral authorities had counted many votes for him as null. In addition, Obrador's legal team had handed over boxes of videos, documents and recordings which he said proved that fraud had been involved in the election.

In addition, Obrador has submitted the case to the Federal Electoral Tribunal, the ultimate arbitrator in electoral disputes, which has to officially declare who will replace outgoing President Vicente Fox by Sept. 6.

Echoing Obrador's call to "struggle peacefully", his supporters have already launched a series of protests in Mexico City and several other cities since Wednesday, charging the IFE with fraud.

Accompanied by leftist leaders and his two sons, Obrador took part in the protest. He also invited singers, actors and intellectuals to participate, vowing to call for more protests if the Federal Electoral Tribunal didn't agree to the demand for a recount.

Meanwhile, PAN candidate Calderon called on his supporters to keep calm, saying he had gained his victory by votes, not by street protests.

The authorities deployed nearly 3,000 policemen to control the protests, during which there were no physical conflicts or casualties reported.

Six miners escaped after the blast and one worker, who suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning, was rescued early Sunday, it said.

Nearly 70 rescuers have been mobilized to rescue the trapped miners, Xinhua said.

Eighteen miners were trapped in a flooded coal mine in the southwestern province of Guizhou, Xinhua reported in a separate dispatch.

The accident occurred at around 11:00 pm Saturday in the Pianpoyuan coal mine in Ziyun Miao Buyi county, it said, without elaborating.

China's coal mines are regarded as the most dangerous in the world with 5,986 workers dying in the industry last year, according to official figures.

Labor rights groups, such as the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin, say the real number of mining deaths could be as high as 20,000 each year.