World Highlights

¤ Republican Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the House of Representatives' fallen majority leader, announced the end of a re-election fight he was in jeopardy of losing and said he would soon step down from the US Congress.

"It's time for me to go do something else," Mr DeLay told Fox News.

¤ This year's hurricane season will not be as ferocious as last year when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and other storms slammed Florida and Texas, but will still be unusually busy, a US forecasting team said. The Colorado State University team led by Dr William Gray, a pioneer in forecasting storm probabilities, said it expected 17 named storms to form in the Atlantic basin during the six-month season, which officially begins on June 1.

¤ Inspectors from the UN nuclear watchdog will arrive in Iran on Friday to visit nuclear sites, including the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, Iran's ISNA news agency reported.

"The agency inspectors are travelling to Tehran this Friday. The inspectors will visit different parts of Iran's nuclear facilities including the Natanz facility," Aliasghar Soltaniyeh, Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, told ISNA.

¤ Iran successfully tested a "super-modern flying boat" and the land-to-sea Kowsar missile that military analysts say is designed to sink ships in the Gulf, state media reported.

The tests came in the middle of the country's Gulf war games that started on Friday. State radio said the Kowsar could evade radar and that its guidance system could not be scrambled.