• EU president Germany has said it would work hard to strike a deal quickly on sharing air passenger data with the US, which is pushing for easier access to European records. Germany is under pressure to negotiate the agreement, designed to help fight terrorism, because a temporary deal signed last October expires in July. But the two sides disagree over how the data should be used.

• A bomb killed 15 people and wounded 55 in the second attack in as many months on Baghdad's much-loved Friday morning pet market and a suicide bomber in Mosul killed seven at a Shi'ite mosque. Yesterday's blast in the capital hit the Ghazil market an hour before a weekly 11 a.m. (0800 GMT) vehicle curfew in the capital, aimed at protecting mosques over Friday noon prayers. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has warned militants from both Shi'ite and Sunni camps they would have nowhere to hide from a coming major crackdown backed by US troops.

• Europe's flu season began two weeks earlier this year compared to last year and a more virulent strain of virus is causing most cases, health experts said yesterday. The European Influenza Surveillance Scheme (EISS), which collects data and monitors influenza throughout the region, received information about the first cases just before Christmas in Scotland and Northern Ireland - earlier than normal. Spain, Greece, Denmark and the Czech Republic have also reported an increasing number of cases.

• The arrest of a Ku Klux Klan member over a double murder in Mississippi in 1964 brings back chilling memories for veterans of the civil rights struggle. Volunteers who came south to register black voters that year lived in fear of attacks by white supremacists especially in remote parts of the state. James Seale, 71, was charged in federal court in Jackson,Mississippi with kidnapping and conspiracy in the deaths of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore.