• Iran will announce unspecified new "nuclear achievements" if the UN takes fresh steps against it over its disputed atomic programme, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said. "If they (the United Nations) pass another resolution against Iran, our nation will reveal new nuclear achievements," Mr Ahmadinejad told a rally in the central province of Fars, the official Irna news agency reported.

• Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr ordered his ministers toquit Iraq's government in protest at Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's refusal to set a timetable for US troops to withdraw. Sadr's populist movement, which draws its support mainly from Iraq's Shi'ite poor, holds six ministries and a quarter of the parliamentary seats in Mr Maliki's fractious Shi'ite Alliance, a coalition of Shi'ite Islamist parties.

• A suicide bomber blew himself up among Afghan policemen doing their morning exercise in the northeastern city of Kunduz, killing nine and wounding 25, the government said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the second deadly suicide attack on police in two days, which came as the New York-based Human Rights Watch said the Taliban were increasingly targetting civilians, killing nearly 700 last year.