BROWN SAYS HE WILL RESIGN TO HELP THE LABOUR PARTY Britain's quest for a new government took a sudden turn on Monday when Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that he would resign within months as Labour Party leader as part of a bid to lure the Liberal Democrats into rejecting the Conservatives and joining a rejuvenated Labour in a left-of-center governing coalition. Brown said he would remain in office to oversee negotiations for a new government, but would stand down as Labour's leader when a successor was elected sometime before the party's annual conference in September. His resignation would end 13 years as Labour's chancellor of the Exchequer and prime minister. AQUINO'S SON TAKES LEAD IN PHILIPPINES Sen. Benigno S. Aquino III, whose parents wrested the Philippines from autocratic rule a generation ago, took a commanding lead early Tuesday morning in the race to become the country's next president, according to incomplete results from Monday's election. With ballots tallied from nearly 60 percent of the precincts nationwide, Aquino, who ran on a theme of anti-corruption, had won more than 40 percent of the votes. He had double-digit leads over his two main rivals, Joseph Estrada, a former president impeached for corruption, and Manuel Villar, a senator and businessman widely perceived as having exploited his political power to benefit his real estate empire. Villar conceded on Tuesday. RESCUERS AMONG DEAD AS TOLL RISES IN RUSSIAN MINE BLASTS The death toll in a double explosion at a Siberian coal shaft climbed to 43 on Tuesday, Russian news agencies reported, and among the dead were many rescuers killed trying to reach trapped comrades. Hope was fading for 47 others caught in a darkened subterranean maze of methane gas and floodwater in what appeared to be the worst Russian mining disaster in three years. As the day wore on in the western Siberian city of Mezhdurechensk, the mine caverns were filling with water and no survivors were being recovered. At least 18 of the dead were rescuers, Russian officials said. THAI PROTESTERS ACCEPT DEAL THAT SETS A NOVEMBER VOTE The anti-government demonstrators who have paralyzed parts of Bangkok for two months announced Monday that they would accept a proposal by Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva for elections in November. While protest leaders had set conditions for dismantling their camp, it appeared that they were being quickly met and that the long, debilitating confrontation might soon end. Abhisit's election time frame was much longer than the 30 days demanded by the protesters, but it nonetheless reflected a willingness to compromise by the prime minister, whose four-year term would be shortened by more than a year. WRECKAGE OF WARSHIP THAT WAS SUNK IS SCOURED FOR CLUES Forensic experts investigating the wreckage of a South Korean warship that sank near the sea border with North Korea have found traces of an explosive component commonly used in torpedoes and mines, South Korea's defense minister said Monday. The 1,200-ton corvette, the Cheonan, sank on March 26 after a mysterious blast split the ship in half. The South Korean government has said a torpedo attack was the likely cause of the blast, and many South Koreans believe the North was responsible. North Korea has denied any involvement in the sinking. IRAN SENTENCES REPORTER IN ABSENTIA TO 13 YEARS IN PRISON A correspondent for Newsweek, Maziar Bahari, 42, jailed in Iran for nearly four months last year before leaving the country has been sentenced in absentia by an Iranian court to an extended flogging and more than 13 years in prison for counterrevolutionary acts, the government there announced Monday. The sentence, announced a day after five Iranian Kurdish activists were abruptly hanged in a Tehran prison, appeared to be a new signal of repression ahead of the anniversary of the disputed presidential election of June 12, 2009, which galvanized Iran's opposition movement into the biggest political threat to the theocracy since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. AIDS ACTIVIST LEAVES CHINA FOR U.S., CITING PRESSURE The founder of a prominent AIDS activist group in Beijing has left China for the United States with his family because of increasing pressure from the government, he and his supporters said Monday. The activist, Wan Yanhai, his wife and their 4-year-old daughter spent the weekend at the home of a friend in Philadelphia after flying from Hong Kong on Thursday. In recent months, the group that Wan led, the Aizhixing Institute, had come under increasing scrutiny from tax officials and even the fire department, he said. 