World Highlights

¤ An Iraqi group has kidnapped a Turkish technician and demanded Turkey withdraw its envoy from Baghdad and press the United States and Iraq's government to free Iraqi prisoners, Al Jazeera television said. A video from the Imam Ali Batallion aired by the satellite station showed a middle-aged man holding up an indentification card bearing the name Hasan Eskimutlu. Al Jazeera said the group gave Turkey a week to meet its demands.

¤ Attorneys for the US Marines accused of killing Iraqi civilians in Haditha will question the authenticity of a videotape at the heart of the case and the credibility of the group that provided it, sources close to the Marines say.

¤ Sri Lanka launched air strikes against Tamil Tiger rebels in retaliation for an attack on a bus that killed 64 people, the bloodiest violence by far since a 2002 ceasefire.

The government said the rebels detonated two mines placed side by side, spraying the packed bus with ball bearings on an isolated road near Tiger territory. Shortly after, air and artillery strikes on the rebel-held northeast coast began.

¤ World powers urged Iran take up a new offer of incentives to halt its nuclear fuel programme, and the West soft-pedalled previous threats of possible sanctions brushed aside by Tehran.

Responding to US, European, Russian and Chinese appeals at a UN nuclear watchdog meeting, a senior Iranian diplomat said the package was under serious consideration. But Iran's supreme Islamic leader said it would not buckle to Western pressure.

¤ Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad offered energy cooperation to oil-thirsty China and other countries, seeking to win friends but avoiding direct mention of Iran's nuclear standoff with the West.

Ahmadinejad attended a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation as an observer, but his presence threatened to upstage the meeting and rile the United States.

¤ Islamist militia advanced on the Somali town of Baladwayne, aiming to expand their control of southern Somalia and beginning to flank the weak interim government's base in Baidoa, residents said.

Residents woke to find the militias, supported by local clerics, in control of a key bridge and a prison, without any fighting. The town near the Ethiopian border has been under the control of a governor appointed by Somalia's interim government.