World Highlights

• Spain began repatriating illegal migrants directly to Guinea Bissau, marking an expansion of Madrid's repatriation programme to West Africa.Some 50 migrants, escorted by Spanish police, arrived in the capital of the former Portuguese colony just after midnight on a chartered civil airline flight.

• A high tech magnetic train smashed into a maintenance vehicle on a test run in northern Germany killing 23 people, authorities said. The elevated Transrapid, one of the world's fastest trains, collided with a maintenance truck and its two man crew at a speed of at least 200 km per hour on the track in the Emsland district of Germany near the Dutch border.

• Hamas said it would not join any Palestinian unity government that recognised Israel, rebuffing President Mahmoud Abbas who said any future coalition would do so and also renounce violence. The blow to Mr Abbas came after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, seeking to revive stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, said she planned to visit the Middle East soon.

• Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf cited a book deal during an appearance with President George W. Bush to avoid repeating a purported US threat to bomb his country "back to the Stone Age" after the September 11 attacks. With his memoirs due for release on Monday, Mr Musharraf used the unusual gambit to smooth diplomatic waters after talks on the US-Pakistan partnership in the war on terrorism and efforts to prevent a Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan.

• An influential Iranian cleric said Iran would not halt uranium enrichment work, calling it an unacceptable precondition set by six world powers for talks over the country's atomic activities. "It (enrichment suspension) is a ridiculous precondition. It is unacceptable," Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani told worshippers at Tehran university, broadcast live on state radio.