• Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad poured cold water on prospects of a breakthrough in nuclear talks with the European Union this week, ruling out a suspension of uranium enrichment. Iran and the EU will resume talks on Tehran's nuclear programme in Turkey on Wednesday after the EU endorsed sanctions against the Islamic republic going beyond UN resolutions.

• The European Union said it hoped to resolve a dispute holding up a wide-ranging partnership pact with Russia before a summit next month, despite the failure of weekend talks with its main energy supplier. But before fresh EU-Russia talks in Luxembourg, some EU diplomats said Moscow's refusal to end a 16-month-old ban on imports of Polish meat showed it was not interested in a pact supposed to cover energy, trade, economic cooperation and human rights.

• The US ambassador to Iraq urged leaders of rival religious and ethnic groups to shelve what he called "I win, you lose" politics and speed up progress on laws crucial to fostering national reconciliation. Ryan Crocker, in his first news conference since arriving in Baghdad in March, said the months ahead for Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's nearly one-year-old fractious government of Kurdish, Sunni Arab and Shi'ite factions would be critical.

• Virginia Tech students carried 33 white flags representing the victims of the deadliest shooting rampage in US history and the gunman responsible, as classes resumed a week after the massacre. Just before the first classes, the group of flag-carrying students marched on the university drill field accompanied by a drum and bugle corps playing America the Beautiful to remember the 27 students, five teachers and gunman Seung-Hui Cho.