World highlights

• President Vladimir Putin accused Georgia of behaving like Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's feared secret police chief in his first public comments on a crisis in relations between the two countries. Mr Putin accused Tbilisi of deliberately provoking Moscow by detaining four Russian army officers on spying charges last week and surrounding their base in the Georgian capital.

• Israel's army withdrew from all of south Lebanon except a small border village, as part of a handover to the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers under a ceasefire deal that ended a war with Hizbollah fighters. Crossing the frontier without fanfare before sunrise, Israeli troops padlocked the border gate at Zarit, close to where Iranian-backed Hizbollah fighters seized two soldiers on July 12 before the conflict with Israel erupted.

• Thailand's military rulers unveiled a stop-gap prime minister and constitution yesterday, fulfilling a promise to step back in favour of civilians within two weeks of their coup against Thaksin Shinawatra. In other signs of the situation stabilising, the tanks that had stood outside Government House since the September 19 putsch rolled back to the barracks and four of Mr Thaksin's most powerful ministers were released from army custody.

• Iraqi Shi'ite politicians called for a major cabinet overhaul, two days after US troops arrested a bodyguard for a top Sunni leader on suspicion of plotting to bomb the fortified government compound. The arrest sparked angry comments from Shi'ite politicians and increased the tension between parliamentary blocs, which are built on sectarian and ethnic lines.