World highlights

• A rift opened between the US and China on how to end a dispute about North Korean bank accounts, with China angry over a US decision it said might harm talks to end Pyongyang's nuclear threat. US envoy Christopher Hill said the decision on North Korean accounts frozen in Macau's Banco Delta Asia (BDA) would help advance a deal obliging Pyongyang to close the reactor at the heart of its nuclear weapons programme.

• Four car bombs, two of them in Baghdad, killed 16 people in Iraq as a US commander said a security crackdown in the capital was reducing casualties from the weapon of choice of insurgents. In the deadliest attack, a suicide car bomber targeting an Iraqi army and police checkpoint killed eight policemen and soldiers in the Karrada district of central Baghdad. The blast wounded 25 people, including two bodyguards of city mayor Sabir al-Issawi, who was unhurt, witnesses said.

• A Democratic plan to withdraw all US combat troops from Iraq by September 1, next year, was approved by a key committee of the US House of Representatives. On a mostly partisan 36-28 vote, the House Appropriations Committee approved a $124.1 billion emergency spending bill, including around $100 billion to continue fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

• Maoist rebels stormed a police camp in the troubled central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, killing 49 members of the police and tribal militia in one of the deadliest attacks by the insurgents in years. Between 300 and 400 rebels attacked the camp surrounded by dense forest in the southern part of the state, throwing grenades and petrol bombs and setting fire to it before escaping with a cache of arms and explosives.

• President Robert Mugabe told Western countries to "go hang" after international outrage over charges his government assaulted the main opposition leader in police detention. Opposition officials say police tortured Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai and several opposition and civic groups' leaders on Sunday when they tried to attend a prayer vigil in a Harare township.