World - AFP

LONDON (AFP) - US presidential hopeful Barack Obama met British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in London on Saturday, focusing on key foreign policy issues facing both countries, particularly Afghanistan and Iraq.

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran now has between 5,000 and 6,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying on Saturday, confirming that the country has expanded its contested nuclear work.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A Uighur separatist group has taken credit for a deadly bus bombing in Shanghai in May and warned of new attacks in China during the Olympics, a group monitoring threats by extremists on the Internet said.

MANILA (AFP) - Air safety investigators were Saturday searching for clues as to what caused a dramatic mid-air rupture which left a gaping hole in the fuselage of a Qantas plane carrying more than 300 passengers.

PHNOM PENH (AFP) - Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen is poised to extend his 23-year grip on power Sunday in general elections unfolding with the kingdom locked in a military standoff with neighbouring Thailand.

GAZA CITY (AFP) - Hamas-run security forces fanned out across Gaza City Saturday, clashing with rival gunmen and arresting dozens of people after a bomb blast killed five senior Palestinian militants and a girl of five.

ANKARA (AFP) - Turkey's top court begins deliberations Monday on whether to shut down the country's ruling party which won a decisive victory in legislative elections just one year ago.

TRIPOLI, Lebanon (AFP) - Lebanese tanks were out on the streets of Tripoli on Saturday after nine people including a boy were killed in sectarian fighting which raged through the night in the northern port city.

LONDON (AFP) - Prime Minister Gordon Brown, hit by a third crushing by-election defeat in as many months, could be forced to quit unless he reverses his government's flagging fortunes, media said Saturday.

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran is planning a mass execution of 30 people convicted of murder and drug trafficking, in the biggest such event in recent years, a local newspaper reported on Saturday.

LONDON (AFP) - US presidential hopeful Barack Obama arrived in London Friday, the last scheduled stop on a world tour aimed at boosting his foreign policy credentials before elections later this year.

BELGRADE (AFP) - A deadline for Radovan Karadzic to appeal his transfer to the UN war crimes tribunal expired Saturday, but it remained unclear whether his lawyer has lodged a complaint.

NICOSIA (AFP) - Rival Cypriot leaders on Friday set September 3 as the date when they will begin direct negotiations on ending the island's 34-year-old division.

ADDIS ABABA (AFP) - An advisor to President Omar al-Beshir threatened Friday that peacekeepers could be expelled from Darfur if the Sudanese leader is indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

MADRID (AFP) - King Juan Carlos and President Hugo Chavez patched up their differences Friday in their first meeting since the Spanish monarch told the Venezuelan president to "shut up" at a summit last year.

TRIPOLI, Lebanon (AFP) - Seven people, including a child, were killed in fierce sectarian clashes on Friday in Lebanon's northern port of Tripoli as fighters exchanged rocket-propelled grenades and sniper fire, a security official said.

LONDON (AFP) - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown suffered another serious blow to his leadership Friday after his governing Labour Party lost one of its safest seats in a by-election in his native Scotland.

MANILA (AFP) - A Qantas Boeing 747 flying to Melbourne made an emergency landing in Manila on Friday after a dramatic mid-air rupture that punched a "gaping hole" in its fuselage, officials and passengers said.

PARIS (AFP) - The Basque separatist group ETA suffered a new blow Friday with the arrest in France of two of its members, including one described by the French interior minister as a senior military commander.

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - The head of the UN mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) conceded Friday that his legal authority in the ethnic Albanian majority territory had been drastically curtailed since a new constitution went into force last month.

BERLIN (AFP) - Barack Obama Thursday told a vast crowd of 200,000 people in Berlin that Americans and Europeans must tear down walls between estranged allies, races and faiths, in a soaring challenge to a new political generation.

PRETORIA (AFP) - Talks began in earnest Thursday on resolving Zimbabwe's political crisis after President Robert Mugabe gave his senior lieutenants the final go-ahead to negotiate power-sharing with the opposition.

KABUL (AFP) - The NATO chief called Thursday for Pakistan to be more involved in tackling extremist bases on its soil, as Afghanistan was hit by new attacks with at least 34 Taliban bodies found after one battle.

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - Cambodia has asked the UN Security Council to postpone a formal meeting on its tense military standoff with Thailand pending talks next week between the two countries' foreign ministers, Vietnam's UN envoy said Thursday.

MADRID (AFP) - Police have found over 100 kilos (220 pounds) of explosives in northern Spain belonging to ETA in an operation linked to the arrest earlier this week of nine suspected members of the Basque separatist group, media reports said Thursday.

JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israel was set to expand a settlement in the occupied Jordan Valley, a senior official said on Thursday, in defiance of Palestinian and international calls to freeze such activity.

BELGRADE (AFP) - With war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic finally in custody, Serbia came under increased pressure Thursday to capture his fugitive wartime military chief Ratko Mladic, also wanted for genocide.

SHANGHAI (AFP) - Police in Shanghai have cracked a terrorist cell planning to attack an Olympic football venue in the Chinese financial hub, state media reported Thursday.