World Highlights

¤ British Interior Minister Charles Clarke came under renewed pressure to resign yesterday after revealing that at least five foreign prisoners released from British jails have reoffended. The timing of the disclosure could not be worse for Prime Minister Tony Blair, who next week faces a crucial test of his waning popularity in local elections.

¤ Five Britons pleaded not guilty yesterday to planning to kill commuters on London's transport system last July, two weeks after suicide bombers killed 52 people on three underground trains and a bus. The men denied trying to detonate bombs on three underground trains and a bus on July 21, mimicking the deadly attacks by four British Muslim militants on July 7 last year.

¤ The six men behind the kidnap, torture and dawn murder of 16-year-old Mary-Ann Leneghan and the attempted murder of her friend were jailed for life yesterday and will serve a total of 148 years behind bars. Ms Leneghan and her 18-year-old friend were abducted, tortured for hours and forced to smoke heroin and crack cocaine in May last year.

¤ The flood risk from the swollen Danube eased throughout Romania yesterday, allowing hundreds of villagers to return home, but officials said the threat of more floods persisted if dikes burst. Large regions of southern Romania along the Danube remain under water after weeks of flooding and some 14,000 villagers are still displaced.

¤ One of the main financiers of Nigeria's fight against HIV/AIDS halted about $50 million in assistance yesterday because the country failed to meet targets on drug access and transparency. The board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria voted to suspend two five-year grants after just two years because of low numbers of people on anti-retroviral drug treatment and concerns over data accuracy, spokesman Jon Liden said.

¤ The EU told Serbia and Montenegro yesterday to catch fugitive war crime suspect Ratko Mladic before Monday or face a halt in talks on closer ties with the bloc. The EU has given Belgrade until the end of April to transfer the former Bosnian Serb military chief to a UN war crime tribunal in the Hague.

¤ French President Jacques Chirac suggested yesterday that the World Bank could channel funds to the Palestinian Authority to help it pay salaries held up by foreign objections to the Hamas-led government. Meeting visiting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Mr Chirac also said it would lobby its European and international partners to resume aid cut off after the Islamist movement Hamas took over the government, his spokesman Jerome Bonnafont said.

¤ French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin yesterday denied that he was involved in a smear campaign against the man who could be his rival in next year's presidential race, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. His second official statement on the scandal in as many days followed media reports that police might soon search his office as part of a judicial inquiry into the smear.