World News Highlights at 0600 GMT, Oct 8

NASHVILLE - Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama battled over the best way to help struggling U.S. workers on Tuesday in a sometimes tense presidential debate that highlighted a wide gap in their economic approaches.

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HONG KONG - Asian stocks tumbled after a devastating day on Wall Street and Hong Kong became the latest economy to slash interest rates as pressure grew for a coordinated, global response to the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

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BANGKOK - Protesters seeking to topple the Thai government threatened more demonstrations in the capital on Wednesday, a day after two people died and over 400 were injured in the worst street violence in 16 years.

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SEOUL - North Korea has fired two short-range missiles into the Yellow Sea, a news report said on Wednesday, in a move likely aimed at dialing up tension as global powers try to have it abide by a nuclear disarmament deal.

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KATHMANDU - A small private plane crashed in the remote mountains of northeast Nepal on Wednesday, killing at least 18 people, airline and airport officials told Reuters.

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BEIJING - Officials in the north Chinese province at the heart of a toxic milk scandal hid a coal mine explosion in July that killed more than 30 miners, state media reported.

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ISLAMABAD - Pakistan's new military spy chief was set to brief lawmakers on the internal security threat and conflict in tribal lands seen as havens for al Qaeda and the Taliban in a rare closed door session on Wednesday.

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WASHINGTON - A federal judge on Tuesday, in a rebuke to the Bush administration, ordered the prompt release in the United States of 17 Chinese Muslims held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

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MEXICO CITY - Hurricane Norbert strengthened off Mexico's Pacific coast on Tuesday and was expected to grow more fierce before hitting the Baja California peninsula later in the week.

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STOCKHOLM - Two Japanese scientists and a Tokyo-born American shared the 2008 Nobel Prize for physics for helping to explain the behavior of subatomic particles, work that has helped shape modern physics theory, the prize committee said on Tuesday.

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MALE - Voting began in the Maldives' first multiparty presidential election on Wednesday, in a poll seen as a referendum on President's Maumoon Abdul Gayoom's 30 year-rule on islands famed for their luxury resorts.

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JAVA, Georgia - Russia will pull back on Wednesday from the southern edge of a buffer zone inside Georgia next to South Ossetia, a Russian officer said as EU monitors watched to see if Moscow would meet its withdrawal deadline.