World highlights

¤ US Vice President Dick Cheney accused Russia of backsliding on democracy and urged it to stop using energy supplies for "blackmail".

¤ The Sudanese government and rebels from the Darfur region faced a third deadline to make peace, with uncertainty surrounding US attempts to wring last-ditch concessions from both sides.

¤ The US military said it was hot on the heels of the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, after discovering documents and an unedited video of him in a rural hideout near Baghdad.

¤ Pakistani police have arrested two Islamist militants suspected of planning a March suicide bomb attack that killed a US diplomat and three others outside the US consulate in Karachi, a Pakistani official said.

¤ Foreign energy companies in Bolivia have agreed to start renegotiating contracts with the government, fulfilling a requirement laid down by President Evo Morales after he nationalised the gas industry, a government source told Reuters.

¤ Sri Lanka's army said it had killed seven suspected Tamil Tigers after an attack on a checkpoint, while the rebels raised new objections to a government plan aimed at ending a deadlock over planned peace talks.

¤ Nepal's Maoist rebels welcomed a ceasefire announced by the new multi-party government and said they would join talks to try to end a decade-old conflict.