World highlights

¤ A powerful earthquake struck the South Pacific islands of Tonga yesterday, generating a tsunami, but there were no reports of damage. The quake, measuring 8.1 on the Richter scale, struck 155 kilometres south of Tonga's Neiafu island at 4.26 a.m. local time (1526 GMT), the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. A large wave would have hit Suva, Fiji, at 1713 GMT and Gisborne, New Zealand, at 1821 GMT, but the tsunami warning was lifted.

¤ A suicide bomber blew himself up among a crowd of men waiting to sign up to join the police in the Iraqi city of Falluja yesterday, killing at least 18 people, doctors said. Violence has flared in mainly Sunni Arab Anbar province, with US and Iraqi forces killing over 100 insurgents over the past week in the capital Ramadi and a suicide car bomber killing 10 in an attempt to assassinate the governor on Tuesday.

¤ The US, Britain and France introduced a UN Security Council resolution yesterday demanding Iran suspend uranium enrichment efforts that the West suspects are part of a secret nuclear weapons programme. The text which is opposed by Russia and China, does not contain any sanctions but threatens to consider "further measures as may be necessary" to ensure Iran's compliance.

¤ Hamas could reciprocate Israeli moves towards peace if the Jewish state agrees to withdraw from all lands occupied in 1967 and acknowledges Palestinian rights, the group's political leader Khaled Meshaal said yesterday. But Israel's President reiterated that talks with the Hamas-led Palestinian government could not commence unless it renounced violence, recognised the Jewish state and interim Palestinian peace deals with it.

¤ 450 illegal immigrants, some of them women, landed in Lampedusa yesterday morning at dawn aboard a 27-metre long fishing boat, La Sicilia newspaper reported. A number of the immigrants managed to disembark the boat before the arrival of the Guardia di Finanza and the Guardia Costiera. Many of them were later intercepted by the Carabinieri's patrol team.

¤ US diplomats yesterday tried to extract concessions from the government of Sudan that could persuade rebels from the Darfur region to sign up to a draft peace agreement designed to end three years of war. The government has accepted the deal on security, power-sharing and wealth-sharing proposed by African Union (AU) mediators, but three Darfur rebel factions refuse to sign, citing objections on a wide range of issues.

¤ Britain's Tony Blair unveiled plans yesterday to toughen laws on deporting foreign criminals, seeking to regain the initiative in a crisis threatening to topple a minister on the eve of local elections.

¤ Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi yesterday said he would not serve a second term, setting the scene for a parliamentary showdown over the election of a new President. Parties across Italy's political spectrum had called on the respected 85-year-old to serve another seven-year term.