World Highlights

¤ A scheduled session of Iraq's parliament today was postponed by the acting speaker yesterday, further delaying the formation of a government already held up by four months of wrangling by political groups.

¤ Senior Democrats sought to raise the heat on embattled Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday as Republicans and the Pentagon came together to defend him and the way he has conducted the war in Iraq.

¤ Afghan forces scoured several southern villages yesterday, hunting for Taliban fighters after one of the heaviest recent battles with the guerillas, a provincial governor said.

¤ Hamas held talks with rival factions yesterday to try to persuade them to join a Palestinian government which the militant group said was facing a "state of crisis" because of Western pressure.

¤ Egyptian police yesterday detained 100 Muslim Brotherhood activists as part of a crackdown on the Islamist opposition group to undermine its campaign against emergency laws, the group's deputy leader said.

¤ Ireland's defence forces marched through the streets of Dublin yesterday in the first military parade to mark the 1916 Easter Rising - long viewed as the springboard for Irish independence - in more than 30 years.

¤ Nepal's political parties urged people yesterday to stop paying taxes and international donors to halt aid to the royalist government as an anti-monarchy campaign widened dramatically.

¤ Chad accused Sudan of trying to use the conflict in Darfur to destabilise the whole of central Africa and it demanded the international community to intervene and prevent regional turmoil.

¤ Days before a summit with US President George W. Bush in Washington, Chinese Communist Party chief Hu Jintao called for talks between China and Taiwan as soon as possible to maintain peace in the region.