World Highlights

¤ Dubai Ports World's $6.85 billion acquisition of Britain's P&O will close today or Monday, despite an additional 45-day review by the US government in response to security concerns, a US Treasury Department official said.

"My understanding is that the deal will not close today," Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt told a Senate panel. "Although they had announced March 2 as the closing date... that deal will not now close until tomorrow or Monday."

¤ Israel's interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed to use an "iron fist" against Palestinian militants as polls showed his party's lead slipping less than a month before a general election.

A spike in violence has increased pressure on Mr Olmert to show he is as ready to take tough military action as was Ariel Sharon, who remains comatose after a stroke two months ago that propelled Mr Olmert to the front of the election campaign.

¤ European Union powers said they had agreed to last-minute talks with Iran yesterday before a UN nuclear watchdog meeting that could prompt Security Council steps against Tehran over concerns it seeks atomic weapons.

But EU diplomats held out little hope of a breakthrough in their first direct contact with Iran since December, noting Tehran was defiantly accelerating uranium enrichment work and declining to embrace a Russian proposal to defuse the crisis.

¤ An al Qaeda member refused to appear before a Guantanamo war crimes tribunal or to cooperate with a US military defense lawyer whom he considers an enemy.

That left the court struggling to figure out how to comply with US President George W. Bush's order to present a "zealous" defense for all the foreign terrorism suspects charged at the Guantanamo base in Cuba.

¤ Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo looks increasingly likely to lift emergency rule within the next few days after her security chiefs lowered alert levels and said the threat of a coup had receded.

"The plotters that sought to undermine and bring down the government have been thwarted," Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez told a news conference. "We feel that we can advise the president that the direction should be towards lifting."

¤ Masked police armed with automatic rifles forced a Nairobi TV station off the air and raided its sister Standard newspaper, provoking outrage among Kenyans and Western nations.

Thousands of newspapers were burned at the Standard printing press during the operation, the most aggressive assault on a mainstream media house since Kenya's 1963 independence.