Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been re-elected as president of Iran in a resounding victory, the interior minister says.With more than 80% of results in, official figures said he won 62.6% of the vote, amid a record high turnout.

But reformist Mir Hossein Mousavi has also claimed victory, calling the result a "dangerous charade", as backers vowed to appeal for a re-run. Police have sealed off Mr Mousavi's campaign HQ, preventing his supporters from holding a news conference.

There have been reports of police deploying on the streets of Tehran and beating people with truncheons as small groups gather to protest.

North Korea said it will "weaponise" its plutonium stocks amid threats to take military action over United Nations sanctions, state media said.Pyongyang has for the first time confirmed it is seeking to enrich uranium in efforts to develop nucealr weapons, it said. North Korea would view any US-led attempts to "blockade" it as an "act of war", the Associated Press (AP) said.

The UN sanctions include the inspection of North Korean ships, a wider ban on arms sales and other financial measures.

Korea analyst Aidan Foster Carter told the BBC Pyongyang's process was "out of control" and that nothing seemed able to persuade North Korea to stop its nuclear ambitions - neither sanctions nor financial incentives.

Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has been raising eyebrows by telling one of the country's most famous artists how to paint better.Visiting 79-year-old artist Ilya Glazunov, Mr Putin stopped in front of a large painting of a medieval knight. "The sword is too short," he is reputed to have said. "It's only good enough for cutting sausage." Not wishing to displease his powerful guest, Mr Glazunov immediately agreed to correct his mistake.

In North Korea, they call it "on the spot guidance". It is when an all powerful-ruler drops by to give soldiers, scientists, farmers even artists advice on how to do their jobs properly.

Last week, he humiliated one of Russia's richest men on live television. He forced the billionaire businessman Oleg Deripaska to reopen an aluminium plant after protests by laid-off workers. As the cameras rolled, Mr Putin threw his pen on the table and ordered Mr Deripaska to sign the paperwork. It was a brilliant piece of political theatre, which went down extremely well with Russia's public who were delighted to see Mr Putin bringing the hated oligarch to heel.

The Obama administration has all but abandoned plans to allow Guantanamo Bay detainees who have been cleared for release to live in the United States, administration officials said yesterday, a decision that reflects bipartisan congressional opposition to admitting such prisoners but complicates efforts to persuade European allies to accept them.

Four Uighur detainees, Chinese Muslims who were incarcerated at the U.S. military prison in Cuba for more than seven years, arrived early yesterday in Bermuda, where they will become foreign guest workers. An administration official said the United States is engaged in negotiations with other countries, including Palau, an island nation in the western Pacific, to find places for the remaining 13 Uighurs held at Guantanamo.

Congressional Democrats yesterday reached agreement on a war-funding bill that would allow detainees to be sent to the United States for trial. The draft bill included no provision for prolonged detention without trial, a step that President Obama has said will be necessary to incarcerate detainees who are too dangerous to release but who cannot be prosecuted.

The Kremlin wants to revamp a top-heavy institution by sharply cutting the number of officers and carrying out a long overdue transition from a cumbersome military machine designed for a land war in Europe to a lithe force that would handle regional wars and terrorism.Though praised by military analysts, the plan seems likely to create a corps of tens of thousands of disgruntled former officers who are entering an economy suffering from the financial crisis.With Russia’s economy strong in the years before the crisis, the Kremlin tried to improve the military by increasing spending on equipment and training. But senior officials acknowledge that the war in Georgia last August exposed severe deficiencies, despite Russia’s easy victory.The armed forces have 1.1 million people now, including 360,000 officers, and the plan is to cut the officer corps to 150,000, officials said. The reductions, first announced last year, have stirred sporadic demonstrations by officers, and some longtime generals have resigned in protest or been pushed out.

North Korea may be preparing a third nuclear test in a show of defiance as the UN gets ready to vote on fresh sanctions for the test it conducted in May, according to US media.

A US government official, speaking on condition of anonymity on Thursday, revealed that assessment to the Associated Press but did not provide details.

Fresh questions were raised last night about Serbia's commitment to arresting Europe's most wanted man, the genocide suspect and Bosnian war commander General Ratko Mladic, after video footage of the fugitive, some of it said to be quite recent, showed him in Serbia.Bosnian public television in Sarajevo broadcast more than half an hour of home video of Mladic and his family, mostly in Serbia and also in a district of Sarajevo, apparently confounding Belgrade's consistent claims that it is hunting for the war criminal but cannot locate him.

investigators uncovered evidence that LTTE fighters gunned down civilians who they believed were trying to escape and that government troops threw grenades into bunkers where they knew civilians were sheltering and used a vehicle to run over injured civilians. There are also allegations that wounded civilians may have been bulldozed into mass graves along with the dead.The most controversial claim, however, is that the government authorised a massacre of LTTE cadres after persuading them to surrender.

A diplomatic spat has broken out over Bermuda's acceptance of four Chinese Muslim Uighurs released from the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay.Britain has told Bermuda, which is one of its overseas territories, it should have consulted London before agreeing to resettle the Uighurs.

Beijing has demanded the return of all Uighurs held by the US forces to China.

The four who were sent to Bermuda were part of a group of 17 Uighurs still at Guantanamo. Earlier in the week the Pacific island of Palau had also agreed to take the detainees.

Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden is still hiding in Pakistan, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Leon Panetta has said.

Demands that the DPRK not conduct any further nuclear test or any launch using ballistic missile technology;

Demands that the DRPK immediately retract its announcement of withdrawal from the NPT;

Demands further that the DPRK return at an early date to the NPT and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, bearing in mind the rights and obligations of States Parties to the NPT, and underlines the need for all States Parties to the NPT to continue to comply with their Treaty obligations;

En dépit des réserves "juridiques" de Paris et de Berlin, José Manuel Barroso espère que chefs d'Etat et de gouvernement des Vingt-sept le désigneront formellement dès le Conseil européen des 18 et 19 juin, à Bruxelles.

Les réserves française et allemande. Nicolas Sarkozy et Angela Merkel ont de fortes réserves sur le calendrier défendu par le PPE et son candidat. Paris veut temporiser en attendant la ratification définitive du traité de Lisbonne.

But, last week’s televised debate between Mousavi and the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, shed light on just how high the stakes are for the Friday election. Ahmadinejad spent much of his time defending the achievements of his hardline foreign policy: He claimed that by following the guidelines of the Islamic Revolution, Iran had weakened Israel and forced America to change its policies. Mousavi, drawing on the authority of his personal acquaintance with Ayatollah Khomeini, who returned from exile in France in 1979 to lead the revolution and found the Islamic state, countered that Ahmadinejad had misunderstood the precepts of the revolution. It was never about needlessly antagonizing the West or about focusing on distant problems in the Holy Land at the expense of those closer to home.

Mousavi is not a perfect candidate: he bears a 20-year absence from the public stage, and neither his electoral platform, which stresses competent management over major political reform, nor his personal charisma — he mumbles and rushes through his speeches — are particularly stirring. But despite his weaknesses, he has managed to attract an unprecedented outpouring of support among the young and the middle and upper classes of the country’s cities.

The Security Council’s five permanent members agreed on Wednesday on a draft resolution that would ratchet up sanctions against North Korea by concentrating on its financial transactions and its arms industry, including allowing for inspections of its cargo vessels on the high seas.

The sharply worded resolution, while diluting some of the sanctions sought by the West and Japan, would still serve notice on North Korea that its nuclear and other weapons programs had created sufficient alarm to forge a rare unified front among the world’s major powers.

although no timetable for a vote was announced, it could come as early as Friday. Given its supporters, the measure seems assured of passing.

The price of oil burst through the $71 a barrel mark today amid revelations that proven reserves had fallen for the first time in 10 years and predictions that the price could eventually hit $250.

Kuwait's oil minister, Sheikh Ahmad al-Abdullah al-Sabah, put some of the rise down to signs of recovery in Asia but warned that overall demand was still weaker than last year. Opec would not raise supply at current oil prices but did not rule it out "if it reached $100", he said.

Alexei Miller, chairman of the Russian energy group Gazprom, raised the stakes further when he reiterated last year's estimates of $250 a barrel. "This forecast has not become reality yet, given that the [credit] crisis gained momentum and exerted a powerful impact on the global energy market. But does this mean that our forecast was unrealistic? Not at all."

The political chief of Iran's Revolutionary Guard has warned reformists in the country against seeking what he called a "velvet revolution", vowing that it would be "nipped in the bud".

In a statement on its website, Javani drew parallels between Mousavi's campaign and the "velvet revolution'' that led to the 1989 overthrow of the communist government in then Czechoslovakia.

"There are many indications that some extremist [reformist] groups, have designed a colourful revolution ... using a specific colour for the first time in an election," the statement said.

Anti-poverty group One, set up by rock star Bono, said Italy had actually cut aid to Africa despite making ambitious pledges at a 2005 economic summit. And it accused France of reducing its aid targets and cutting its aid budget.

n 2005, the G8 pledged to increase aid to Africa by $25bn (£15bn) by 2010 - more than doubling the 2004 level of aid to the continent.

Berlusconi has had more than a little trouble lately with embarrassing photos. So it must have been with a sinking ­feeling that he watched the Libyan leader descend the aircraft steps with another one pinned to his chest.The photograph Gaddafi wore to several of the ceremonies on the opening day of his visit did not show young women in underwear by Berlusconi's poolside, let alone a former Czech prime minister in the altogether. But it was discomforting for his hosts all the same: it showed the Libyan resistance leader, Omar Mukhtar, the "Lion of the Desert", on the day before he was hanged by ­Italian colonialists in 1931.

On the eve of what looks like the country's most significant election in a decade, Ahmadinejad was in classic attack mode yesterday, using his final campaign rally to lambast Zionism and imperialists and accuse the three other candidates of using "Hitler's methods, to repeat lies and accusations until ­everyone believes them".

In a strange piece of political repetition, Ahmadinejad's slogan, courtesy of Barack Obama, is "Yes We Can". Even opponents admit it would be rash to assume he cannot win four more years. His common touch and defiance of the US and Israel go down well in the countryside and small towns, and with many poor and traditional people everywhere.