• US Defence Secretary Robert Gates dismissed an attack on US foreign policy by Russian President Vladimir Putin as the blunt talk of an old spy and said it was vital to keep working with Moscow. In a speech which one US senator said smacked of Cold War rhetoric, Mr Putin told a security conference in Munich on Saturday the US was making the world a more dangerous place by pursuing policies aimed at making it the "one single master".

• Talks aimed at dismantling North Korea's nuclear weapons programme failed to reach agreement, stalling on Pyongyang's demands for energy compensation and leaving one more day for negotiators to scramble for a deal.

• A 20-year-old woman from West Java who tested positive for bird flu has died, a health official said. Her death takes Indonesia's overall toll to 64 fatalities, the highest of any nation in the world.

• Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reserved judgement on a Palestinian unity deal and a senior Israeli official said a US-brokered summit with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would be held as planned. "Israel neither rejects nor accepts the agreements," Mr Olmert said about a power-sharing pact signed by Hamas and Fatah.

• An explosion tore through a military ceremony in southern Somalia, killing at least four people and wounding more than 20 others, including senior officers and police commanders, witnesses said. The attack on Kismayu's Independence Gardens was the latest post-war bloodshed in the Horn of Africa nation.