World Highlights

O Fatah agreed at initial talks with Hamas yesterday to try to find common ground for a governing partnership between the long-dominant Palestinian faction and the militant group that crushed it at the polls. Fatah has been cool to the idea of joining a government led by its powerful Islamist rival, which swept to victory in the January 25 election on a platform of rooting out corruption in a Palestinian Authority dominated by the mainstream faction.

O Revenge attacks against Muslims killed at least 27 people in southeastern Nigeria yesterday after anti-Christian violence killed dozens and left thousands homeless in the mainly Muslim north. The slaughter raised the death toll from five days of religious riots fuelled by political tensions in Africa's most populous country to at least 73, and possibly many more.

O A bomb exploded on an industrial estate in northern Spain yesterday, causing damage but no injuries, after a warning from armed Basque separatist group ETA, police said. Police cordoned off part of an industrial estate in Bolueta, near the Basque city of Bilbao, after a Basque newspaper received a telephoned warning that an ETA bomb had been placed there.

O Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, incapacitated by a January 4 stroke, underwent a procedure to remove fluids from his abdominal cavity yesterday and remained in critical but stable condition, Jerusalem's Hadassah hospital said. The hospital said in a statement that the procedure was ordered after a routine CT scan found "a small accumulation of fluid" around his stomach.

O An explosion aimed at Nato peacekeepers killed an Afghan civilian yesterday and wounded 13 people, including a German peacekeeper, in northern Afghanistan, police said. The blast, caused by a remotely-controlled device attached to a bicycle, went off as a group of peacekeepers were shopping in the northern town of Kunduz, police chief Mutalib Beg said.

O President George W. Bush did not know about a deal to hand over operations at major US ports to an Arab company until after his administration approved it, the White House said yesterday. Surprised by a backlash from Mr Bush's own Republican party, the White House said it erred in not explaining the deal to Congress where members have decried the sale of the company to a Dubai-based firm as a risk to US security.