¤ India prepared for uneasy celebrations of the biggest festival of the Hindu year as police hunted those behind three devastating bomb blasts in the capital.Officials said they had several leads on the attacks that killed at least 59 people in crowded bazaars in New Delhi on Saturday and were checking an obscure Kashmiri group's claim of responsibility.
¤ Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi appointed Shinzo Abe as Japan's top government spokesman in a cabinet reshuffle, strengthening the popular Abe's position as a candidate to succeed the prime minister next year. Mr Koizumi, who led his Liberal Democratic Party to a landslide win in a general election last month, has said he will step down when his term as party head ends next September and that he would appoint potential successors to key posts in the reshuffle.
¤ Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, facing the prospect of a stinging political defeat, postponed for a week a parliamentary showdown with members of his own Likud party still fuming over Israel's Gaza pullout. Israeli political infighting over new cabinet nominations that Mr Sharon had planned to present for Knesset approval and a surge of violence with the Palestinians have dampened peace hopes rekindled by the withdrawal.
¤ Security forces used tear gas, water cannons and sticks to disperse taunting opposition supporters in Zanzibar in a second day of violence over an election on the semi-autonomous Tanzanian islands. Both main parties claimed to be ahead, based on early results. The opposition Civic United Front (CUF) said that with more than two-thirds of votes counted, it had 54.2 percent versus 45.7 percent for the government, in power for the last four decades both on the islands and on mainland Tanzania.
¤ Opec expects world oil prices to stabilise in a range of $45-$55 per barrel next year and has ample spare capacity to meet demand, acting Secretary-General Adnan Shihab-Eldin said.
"I see the prices next year in the range of $45-$55," Shihab-Eldin told Reuters Television in an interview. "There is room for them to stabilise in this range, certainly above $40," he said, without specifying which price he was referring to.