At least nine Indian soldiers were killed and 16 wounded yesterday when their vehicle detonated a landmine in the biggest attack on Indian soldiers in recent months.

Their army bus was blown up near Kashmir's main city, Srinagar, two days ahead of a new round of India-Pakistan peace talks opposed by Kashmiri separatist militants.

Kashmir's frontline rebel group, Hizbul Mujahideen, claimed responsibility for the attack. A caller who identified himself as Ehsan Elahi, spokesman of Hizbul Mujahideen, told Reuters more than two dozen soldiers had been killed.

Up for second term as EC president

European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso would like to stay on for a second term, Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad quoted him as saying yesterday.

"If I had to take a decision today on a second term, I would say yes... assuming of course that I have the support of the member states and the European parliament," Barroso told the paper.

Barroso, 52, who served as prime minister of Portugal from 2002 to 2004 before resigning to take the European Commission presidency, said he would take a definitive decision next year.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said last week that he would support Barroso for a second term when the mandate ends next year.

Spotted on Pakistan's deadly peak

A rescue helicopter has spotted two Italian mountaineers stranded on one of the world's deadliest peaks in northern Pakistan, the Italian embassy said yesterday.

The two climbers - Simon Kehrer and Walter Nones - had been stranded on Nanga Parbat, also known as Killer Mountain, since early last week when their colleague, Karl Unterkircher, fell into a crevasse and died.

"They have been spotted. They have also been reached with some equipment, food and other things. We dropped them a bag with equipment," Italian embassy spokesman Oddo Sergio told Reuters.

However, he said bad weather and the sharp incline were hampering efforts to rescue them.

Jolie leaves hospital after giving birth

Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie has left the French hospital where she gave birth to twins last week, the hospital said yesterday.

"Mrs Angelina Jolie left the clinic Santa Maria of Foundation Lenval early in the morning, on July 19. The mother and her babies are doing very well," the Lenval hospital in the southern French city of Nice said in a statement on its website.

Zimbabwe to have 100 bln dollar note

Zimbabwe's central bank will introduce new higher-value 100 billion Zimbabwe dollar notes tomorrow as part of a desperate fight against spiralling hyperinflation, the bank said.

Zimbabweans are suffering chronic shortages of meat, maize, fuel and other basic commodities due to the collapse of the once prosperous economy, which critics blame on President Robert Mugabe's policies, including his violent seizure of white-owned farms.

Central bank Governor Gideon Gono announced last Wednesday that inflation had surpassed 2.2 million per cent, though some economists put it much higher.

In a notice in the official Herald newspaper yesterday, Gono said the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe would introduce 100 billion dollar special agro-cheques (notes), to help consumers who currently need to carry large wads of cash even for simple transactions.

Welsh minister resigns after gaffes

A Welsh Assembly minister has resigned after a series of gaffes including walking into a pub smoking a cigar.

Former Heritage Minister Rhodri Glyn Thomas said in his resignation letter that his position was "no longer sustainable" because of the publicity that had followed him during the past few weeks.

The Plaid Cymru member had been asked to leave a pub in the country's capital, Cardiff, when he walked up to the bar with a lit cigar in his hand.

He had previously been a keen advocate of the ban on smoking in public places ahead of its introduction in Wales in April last year.