• Prime Minister Tony Blair warned of a generation-long struggle against militant Islam and said British troops must be prepared to fight wars as well as keep the peace. Mr Blair's speech, given on the Navy assault ship HMS Albion,was clearly intended as a rallying cry to a nation worried about the growing British military death toll in Afghanistan and Iraq.
• Pakistan said yesterday the US had not given it any information about the presence of al Qaeda leaders after US intelligence chief John Negroponte said they were holed up in Pakistan. "We have no such information nor has any such thing been communicated to us by any US authority," Pakistan's military spokesman Major-General Shaukat Sultan said.
• EU President Germany will push the bloc's other 26 states on Monday to agree to new ways to step up police cooperation after a plan to allow cross-border pursuits of criminals failed last year. At a meeting in Dresden on Monday and Tuesday, EU interior and justice ministers will also discuss controversial proposals to pool national migration quotas as well as an EU Commission plan for a US-style EU green card for high-skilled migrants.
• The Rift Valley Fever, a virus that has killed nearly 80 people in Kenya and is spread from infected livestock, has moved on to the Somali border town of Doble, where thousands of refugees fleeing conflict are assembled. The disease develops into a much more severe illness once it crosses over to humans causing victims to abort, vomit blood or bleed to death.
• The US could start withdrawing forces from Iraq this year if the additional troops being sent to Baghdad reduce violence significantly, US Defence SecretaryRobert Gates said. "If these operations actually work you could begin to see a lightening of the US footprint both in Baghdad and Iraq itself," Mr Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
• Germany must be on guard against the threat of terrorist attacks from left-wing extremists as well as Islamic groups during its Group of Eight (G8) presidency, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said yesterday. Mr Schaeuble said that it would be dangerous and foolish to underestimate the threat of left-wing attacks, in particular at the G8 summit in June in the Baltic resort of Heiligendamm.
• Somali warlords agreed to merge their forces into a new national army to tame the anarchic nation, but fighting outside the presidential palace where they met showed how hard that task will be.Warlord gunmen trying to force their way inside fought Somali troops and the shootout killed a handful of people.