World highlights

• Ethiopia said yesterday it was halfway to crushing Somali Islamists as its forces advanced on the religious movement's Mogadishu stronghold after a week of war in the Horn of Africa. Somalia's envoy to Addis Ababa said Ethiopian troops were within 70 kilometres of the capital and could capture it in 24 to 48 hours.

• The deaths of six more American soldiers in Iraq pushed the US death toll to at least 2,978 - five more than the number killed in the September 11 attacks - as bombs killed more than 20 people in Baghdad yesterday. At least 89 US soldiers have died so far this month, making it the deadliest this year after October's toll of 106.

• A Spanish surgeon who has just examined Cuban leader Fidel Castro said yesterday he is making a good recovery from intestinal surgery, does not have cancer, and could return to governing his country. Castro's disappearance from the public eye after emergency surgery for intestinal bleeding in July sparked frenzied speculation about his health, but surgeon Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido said the communist leader was in good condition.

• Turkmen legislators handed a Soviet-style unanimous omination for next president yesterday to the man who stood in as caretaker after autocratic leader Saparmurat Niyazov died last week. Acting President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov now looks almost certain to win a February 11 election that Turkmenistan-watchers see as largely symbolic in the gas-rich country which has never held an election judged free by Western monitors.

• Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh confirmed yesterday he had been invited to Jordan but said no date had been set for possible talks in the kingdom with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on ending in-fighting. "We pray to God that this step will be a good start to our national unity and putting our Palestinian house in order, to block intervention by (Israel) and the US administration in our internal affairs," Haniyeh, a Hamas leader, told reporters.

• Russia said yesterday new round of talks with Belarus on gas prices for 2007 had yielded no results, but Europe was safe as Moscow had stockpiled enough gas in Germany and Austria to guard against possible cuts. Russia's gas monopoly Gazprom said it still hoped for a deal before the New Year to allow Belarus to receive gas in 2007 and Gazprom to transit gas smoothly via the ex-Soviet state to customers in Poland and Germany.

• A ruptured crude oil pipeline in the Gulf of Mexico spilled approximately 21,000 gallons of crude oil over the weekend, leaving a half-mile-long oil slick in the water, the US Coast Guard said yesterday.