¤ Al Qaeda leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said in a rare video his mujahideen were fighting on in the three-year-old war against the "crusader enemy" and America was behind efforts to form a new government. "Your mujahideen sons were able to confront the most ferocious of crusader campaigns on a Muslim state," a black-clad Zarqawi said in the video posted on the Internet. "They have stood in the face of this onslaught for three years."

¤ President George W. Bush pressured profit-rich oil companies to invest in new refineries and announced steps against any price gouging to contain gas prices that have soared while his popularity plummets. He directed the Environmental Protection Agency to suspend federal clean-burning gasoline rules this summer that are forcing consumers to buy expensive new gasoline blends.

¤ Hundreds of thousands of people flooded the streets of Nepal's capital after King Gyanendra announced a deal to end weeks of unrest, but the rally was part victory celebration and part continued protest. Gyanendra announced on Monday night that he had reinstated the country's dissolved parliament, meeting a key demand of the seven-party alliance, which swiftly welcomed the decision and called off their protests.

¤ A Saudi man charged with being part of an al Qaeda bomb-making cell branded the United States an enemy of God and rejected its right to try him in a military tribunal. Jabran Said bin al Qahtani, an electrical engineer captured at an al Qaeda safe house in Pakistan in March 2002, appeared for a pre-trial hearing near the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, wearing the beige prison garb given to detainees classed as "compliant."

¤ Mexico's presidential election race now appears wide open after the leftist favourite threw away a huge lead by squabbling with President Vicente Fox and refusing to join a televised debate with his rivals. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a former Indian rights activist who promises heavy spending on Mexico's poor, had looked like a safe bet for victory in the July 2 election but his lead has evaporated over the past month.

¤ Canada's new Conservative government, which is openly sceptical about the Kyoto climate change protocol, said it backs a breakaway group of six nations that favour a voluntary approach to cutting emissions of greenhouse gases. The Conservatives - whose power base is in the energy-rich western province of Alberta - say Canada cannot meet its Kyoto targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

¤ The UN Security Council voted to impose sanctions on four Sudanese accused of abuses in the Darfur conflict that has cost tens of thousands of lives and uprooted at least two million people. The vote on a US-drafted resolution was 12 to zero with three abstentions - Russia, China and Qatar. The sanctions, a travel ban and a freeze on assets abroad, were the first adopted against individuals involved in the Darfur war.

¤ United Nations investigator Serge Brammertz interviewed President Bashar al-Assad over Syria's alleged role in the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, UN officials said. The meeting was the first between UN investigators and the Syrian leader since the UN inquiry opened last June into the killing of Hariri and 22 others by a truck bomb in February last year. There was no immediate news of how the interview had gone.

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