• Iran will not agree to suspend uranium enrichment as demanded by the UN Security Council, which has given Tehran until February 21 to halt sensitive atomic work, the Foreign Ministry said.The UN slapped sanctions on Iran in December, barring the transfer of sensitive materials and know-how to the Islamic Republic's nuclear programme. It threatened further action if Iran did not heed UN demands.

• An explosion caused by a suspected bomb in a McDonald's restaurant in Russia's second city of St Petersburg injured at least five people. A police spokesman tsaidthere had been an explosion in the restaurant on Nevsky Prospect, the city's main thoroughfare, and that five people had been wounded.

• Top US Democrats vowed to raise pressure on President George W. Bush to shift strategy in Iraq by trying to revise the 2002 congressional resolution that authorized him to wage war. Undeterred by the Senate Republicans'blocking of a resolution opposing Mr Bush's troop buildup in Iraq, leading Democrats said a new push would seek to specify that the mission of US troops did not include interceding in a civil war.

• A car exploded in Mogadishu killing its four occupants and assailants shot dead a Somali government soldier, witnesses said, in the latest violence in the chaotic city hit by near-daily attacks.The car blew up near a soccer stadium in the north of the Somali capital, where hundreds of people have fled their homes to escape bloodshed after government troops, backed by Ethiopian forces, ousted Islamists in a December war.

• Nearly two dozen bombs exploded across Thailand's Muslim south, killing three people and wounding at least 46 in attacks on karaoke bars, a hotel and other targets in mainly urban areas, the police and army said. Most of the 23 bombswent off around 7 p.m (1200 GMT) across the four southern provinces of Narathiwat, Yala, Pattani and Songkhla, near the Malaysian border, where more than 2,000 people have been killed in a three-year separatist insurgency.

• British Prime Minister Tony Blair said there was a real chance industrialised countries could agree the outline of a deal to succeed the KyotoProtocol on curbing greenhouse gas emissions at a June summit. Britain put global warming at the top of the diplomatic agenda during its presidency of the Group of Eight (G8) club of industrialised nations in 2005 and Mr Blair is pushing for a breakthrough before he leaves office this year.