World highlights

• President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by phone yesterday and the White House said they agreed to keep talking about the UN-run Serbian province of Kosovo.

• Russia yesterday requested an emergency conference to discuss an arms control pact after accusing Nato nations of ignoring the deal negotiated in the months after the Cold War ended. Last month, President Vladimir Putin froze Moscow's commitments under the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty and said Russia could totally quit it altogether if Russia-Nato council failed to find a solution suitable to Moscow.

• In a surprising about-face, Pope Benedict has decided to restore power and prestige to the Vatican department that oversees dialogue with Islam a year after he controversially downgraded it.

• Palestinian leaders tried to negotiate an end to a bloody stand-off between the Lebanese army and Islamist militants who have been holed up in a refugee camp for more than a week.

• Thirteen people were killed and 35 wounded in Afghanistan when police opened fire to break up a violent protest against a provincial governor.

• The President of Ethiopia's volatile Somali region was wounded in the leg in a grenade attack yesterday during a ceremony in the regional capital Jijiga, a senior government official said. The blast also killed at least five people in the crowd around him and set off a stampede in which up to six more died, witnesses and aid workers said.

• A scandal-tainted minister in Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Cabinet committed suicide yesterday, compounding problems for the Japanese leader whose support has slumped ahead of a July election.

• France and Italy said they agreed on the core institutional reforms needed to make the EU function more effectively and on the necessity of strengthening European economic governance.

• Former PM Ehud Barak looks likely to contest a run-off vote to lead Israel's Labour party after a primary election yesterday that seems to have toppled the current chairman, exit polls indicated.

• Spanish police said yesterday they had arrested 16 people suspected of recruiting Islamic fighters for Iraq and North Africa. The 14 Moroccans and two Algerians are alleged to have indoctrinated others with radical Islamic teachings and glorified "jihad", or holy war, the ministry said in a statement.

• Bangladesh security forces detained the most senior politician in the army-backed government's drive against graft yesterday, taking the general secretary of the powerful Awami League into custody.

• Kidnappers yesterday released a Polish engineer seized last Thursday in Nigeria's oil-producing Niger Delta, security sources said, but about 23 other foreigners are still in captivity in the anarchic delta.