• North Korea has agreed to resume six-country talks aimed at winding up its nuclear arms programme soon, the US envoy to the thorny negotiations said yesterday. "There was an agreement that we felt we can make progress and we should go ahead and try to schedule a six-party session," Christopher Hill told reporters in Seoul, commenting on meetings he held with the communist state's negotiator earlier this week.

• Beijing insisted yesterday it was opposed to an arms race in space after Japan and Britain joined a chorus of concern over a satellite-killing missile test by China - the first known experiment of its type in more than 20 years. The United States says China used a ground-based ballistic missile to shoot apart an ageing weather satellite on January 11, scattering dangerous debris that could damage other satellites and raising risks of escalating military rivalry in outer space.

• US and Iraqi troops seized a prominent spokesman for Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr yesterday, confronting a movement that has a key role in the ruling coalition but is accused by Washington of running death squads. The midnight raid near Baghdad's Sadr City district, which Sadr's aides called an "American provocation", came as Defense Secretary Robert Gates flew in to the southern city of Basra to meet the commander in Iraq, General George Casey.

• Former Republican Representative Bob Ney of Ohio was sentenced yesterday to two-and-a-half years in prison for his role in the Jack Abramoff political corruption scandal that helped Democrats win control of the US Congress. Standing before the judge, a sorrowful Ney apologised to his family, friends and former constituents and said in brief remarks that he would continue "to battle the demons of addiction that are within me."