World Highlights

¤ A typhoon slammed into south China, killing 11 people and forcing the evacuation of more than one million, Xinhua news agency said, while Vietnam was still searching for 35 fishermen missing at sea.

Typhoon Chanchu, which brought heavy rain and high winds, made landfall between the cities of Shantou and Xiamen in the early morning, the Hong Kong Observatory said.

¤ A roadside bomb near Baghdad killed four US soldiers and Iraq's leaders fought last-minute battles for jobs in a much delayed national unity government before a parliament vote scheduled for tomorrow.

An Iraqi interpreter also died in the blast northwest of the capital in the type of violence Washington hopes a grand coalition of Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds will start to tackle after five months of stalemate.

¤ An Iraqi group issued a video of a United Arab Emirates diplomat kidnapped in Baghdad, and demanded that the Gulf state close its embassy in Iraq, Al Jazeera television reported.

The channel aired the video showing a man standing next to a wall. No audio could be heard on the brief footage.

¤ Security forces from rival Palestinian factions paraded through the streets of Gaza, sometimes within feet of one another, intensifying fears of a showdown between the heavily armed groups.

Bearded young men armed with AK-47s and dressed in military fatigues, part of a new 3,000-strong Hamas-allied force, held ground on many streets, while a bolstered police force loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas paraded nearby.

¤ Oil bounced back above $69 a barrel, stemming four days of losses on worries over inflation and slowing demand that had brought prices to a five-week low.

Commodities, stock and bond markets reeled Wednesday after the United States reported a steep rise in consumer prices last month, driven by a big jump in fuel costs.

¤ President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad derided foes of Iran's nuclear work as mentally disturbed, ignoring a fresh plea by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan for all sides in the dispute to calm their rhetoric.

Pursuing a diplomatic effort, European nations want to offer Iran security guarantees as a key incentive to freeze its uranium enrichment programme, but US officials say Tehran can expect no non-aggression pledge from Washington.

¤ Nepal's parliament approved a sweeping plan to curtail the powers of the king and take away his control over the army, a historic move for a country that has traditionally considered him to be a god.

The landmark decision came less than a month after often-violent mass protests across the impoverished Himalayan nation pressured King Gyanendra to reinstate parliament and hand power back to a multi-party government.