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Xinhua world news summary at 1530 GMT, March 9

Xinhua, March 9, 2016 Adjust font size:

At least eight persons were killed after Taliban gunmen attacked government offices in Gereshk district of southern Afghanistan's province of Helmand on Wednesday, an official said.

"The gunbattle started roughly at 6:00 a.m. local time. Sporadic clashes are going on as security forces are repelling the attack at around midday. Those killed included seven attackers and one policeman," Abdul Jabar Qahraman, a senior provincial security official, told Xinhua. (Afghanistan-Taliban)

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SEOUL -- Google's computer program AlphaGo on Wednesday unexpectedly defeated world human Go champion Lee Sedol of South Korea in the first of their five-game match, taking a 1-0 lead with an automatic victory by a wide margin.

Lee, the world champion of the ancient Chinese board game Go in the past 10 years, was shockingly defeated by AlphaGo, a computer program developed by Google's London-based artificial intelligence (AI) arm. (S. Korea-Go Match)

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SARIPUL, Afghanistan -- Armed militants, presumably Taliban fighters, abducted nearly a dozen civilians in Sayad district of the northern Saripul province on Wednesday, a member of provincial council said.

"A group of armed Taliban intercepted a vehicle in Qaflatan area of Sayad district today morning and took away 11 commuters of the vehicle to unknown location," Mohammad Ali Hakimi told Xinhua. (Afghanistan-Militant)

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DHAKA -- Three people including a pilot were killed and another person was injured critically on Wednesday morning when a cargo plane crashed into the Bay of Bengal off the coast of Bangladesh's southeastern Cox's Bazaar district, some 292 km from capital Dhaka.

Sadhan Kumar Mohanta, manager of Cox's Bazaar Airport, told Xinhua that the body of the pilot who appeared to be a white-skinned foreigner was recovered shortly after the plane crashed. (Bangladesh-Cargo Plane) Endi