World highlights

¤ Almost 2,000 bodies were taken to Baghdad's morgue in July, the highest tally in five months of rising sectarian bloodshed which has forced the US to boost troop levels in the capital to head off a civil war. About 90 per cent had died violently.

¤ Cuba's communist government has signalled a crackdown on black-market satellite dishes used by citizens to get news and views from its arch enemy, the US, nine days after ailing leader Fidel Castro temporarily relinquished power to his brother.

The Communist Party newspaper Granma warned that the dishes, which many Cubans use to watch Spanish-language TV programmes from the exile bastion of Miami, could be used by the US government to broadcast subversive information.

¤ Two southern Indian states banned the sale of soft drinks produced by Coca-Cola and Pepsi after an environmental group said it had found pesticides in the global giants' products.

¤ Water flowed to thousands of farmers in east Sri Lanka for the first time in three weeks after Tamil Tiger rebels lifted a blockade, but there was no end to the worst fighting since a 2002 truce. The army fired rockets towards Tiger positions, 15 days after jets first dropped bombs on rebel areas in a bid to wrest control of a disputed sluice. Air force raids continued yesterday.

¤ Swollen rivers swamped thousands of villages and towns across India's south and west, forcing 4.5 million from their homes as rescuers struggled to bring them food and drinking water, officials said.

India's annual monsoon rains - vital for the country's agriculture-driven economy - have triggered floods across at least five states since the weekend, killing at least 311 people, submerging villages and causing widespread damage to crops.

¤ Typhoon Saomai gathered strength as it swirled towards China, with landfall expected today, while a tropical storm fizzled to the south of Taiwan and another veered towards the east of Japan.

¤ Two Norwegians and two Ukrainians were kidnapped at gunpoint from an oil services ship off the coast of Nigeria, the latest in a series of abductions in Africa's top oil producer.

¤ Nepal's Maoists and the government said they had resolved differences over managing their weapons, paving the way for the eventual inclusion of the insurgents in an interim administration.

The announcement came after Maoist chief Prachanda and Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala held talks to end a row over the issue. The dispute had begun to strain ties between the two sides and hurt their three-month-old peace process.

¤ A 17-year-old girl has become the 44th Indonesian victim of bird flu, the second teenager to die of the disease this week in the country that has now recorded the highest number of human bird flu deaths.