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Chile is gearing up for a presidential runoff next Sunday after neither top candidate clinched a definitive win in the first round of voting. Independent candidate Sebastian Pinera, a conservative bililonaire, is in the lead at presnet against fomrer president Eduardo Frei. It is the largest show of support an independent candidaet has seen in recent history. The two main candidates faced off in a televised debate late on Monday as their campaigns reach the final stretch. At the centre of that debate was Chile’s human rights record. Some of Pinera’s conservative supporters are known to have backed Augusto Pinoceht’s dictatorship decades ago. Amid this flurry of political activity, a new memorial museum is opening this week in Santiago, the capital, a project led personally by Michelle Bachelet, the current president. The museum is a tribute to tens of thousands of vicitms, who like herself, suffered under Pinochet’s dicatatorship. Al Jazeera’s Lucia Newman has this report (12 Jan 10).

Armed men in Mexico have killed the family of a special forces marine involved in fighting a powerful durg leader.

The attack took place just hours after the military honoured the officer as a national hero.

He died last week in a raid that also killed cartel head Arturo Beltran Leyva.

Franc Contreras reports.