World Highlights

¤ China urged the early resumption of six-party talks on dismantling North Korea's nuclear programmes yesterday, during a meeting with the North's Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun, state media reported.

China has played host to several rounds of talks that also group the two Koreas, the US, Japan and Russia, but Pyongyang has refused to attend since the last session in November, citing Washington's crackdown on its illicit financial dealings.

¤ Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been sent to a punishment cell in his Siberian jail. His lawyers are already disputing two other spells in punishment cells - one for drinking tea in the wrong place, since he could be denied early release if they stay on his record. The website, www.khodorkovsky.ru, said he was being punished for breaking prison rules that ban buying, selling and gift giving.

¤ Five Afghan police shot dead seven fellow officers as they slept before defecting to join Taliban guerillas fighting in southern Afghanistan. More than 400 people, most of them militants, dozens of Afghan security forces, and at least 17 civilians and four foreign troops were killed in the fighting last month.

¤ An explosion caused by people playing with ammunition killed one and injured three at a military barracks in Turkey yesterday, CNN Turk reported. The barracks was near a village some 150 km from Istanbul. No further details were available and local police could not confirm the report.

¤ The Prime Minister of Iceland, whose nation has been hit by worries about economic overheating, said he will step down as head office party and leave politics. Prime Minister Halldor Asgrimsson told local media he would take responsibility for the poor performance of his Progressive Party in local elections on May 27.

¤ Aid is now flowing to tens of thousands of survivors of Indonesia's earthquake but shelter remains a critical problem, the UN said, as Jakarta revised down the disaster death toll. The Indonesian government said it would start handing out compensation to the victims to buy clothes and reconstruct their houses, more than a week after the quake killed 5,782 people and left tens of thousands homeless.

¤ Czech President Vaclav Klaus asked the right-wing opposition to try to form a government and end a stalemate produced by the weekend election. However, in a sign of how difficult the talks will be, leftist Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek said his Social Democrat party would not tolerate such a cabinet and instead proposed the formation of a government of non-party experts.