World Highlights

¤ Security forces battled armed gangs and insurgents in two Iraqi cities as bomb attacks killed 21 in the capital, highlighting the precarious task facing US-led forces trying to stem sectarian violence.

Al Qaeda wants to build a political operation in Iraq to broaden its campaign against the US-backed government.

¤ A Washington-bound United Airlines flight from London made an emergency landing in Boston after a woman suffering from claustrophobia became unruly, but there was no apparent terrorist threat, police and security officials said.

¤ Iran's foreign minister said Tehran was ready to discuss the issue of suspending uranium enrichment in talks with the West but would seek to explain that it believes any halt would be "illogical".

¤ A Lebanese construction worker was kidnapped in Nigeria in defiance of a government order for security agencies to crack down on a wave of abductions in Africa's top oil producer.

¤ The death toll from the latest in a series of devastating floods in Ethiopia rose to 364 after rescuers discovered 170 more bodies floating on the burst river.

That lifted to around 870 the total feared dead from heavy rains in the east and south of the Horn of Africa nation this month.

¤ Islamist militia took over a key port in central Somalia, expanding a territorial push from their base in Mogadishu that is denting the interim government's aspirations to national authority.

¤ Taliban insurgents fired mortar bombs into a NATO base in Afghanistan wounding up to seven Canadian soldiers, a spokesman for the alliance said.

¤ Indian soldiers shot dead five suspected Muslim militants as they tried to cross into Indian Kashmir from Pakistan, an army spokesman said.

¤ Four Russian mountaineers are missing on Pakistan's K2, the world's second highest mountain, after they were apparently swept away in an avalanche, an expedition organiser said.

¤ Children under the age of 14 will be banned from working as domestic servants or at hotels, tea shops, restaurants and resorts in India from October but sociologists and officials fear the ban will have little effect without a concrete plan to provide for children often forced into the workforce by extreme poverty.