China has demanded the return of 17 Chinese Muslim Uighur detainees held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay.America should "stop handing over terrorist suspects to any third country," foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said. Palau, a former US Pacific territory which does not recognise China, has agreed to accept the ethnic Uighurs.

Russia must keep at least 1,500 nuclear warheads after talks with the United States on a new arms treaty, Interfax news agency quoted the commander of Russia's Strategic Nuclear Forces as saying Wednesday.

"In this contract on a new strategic forces treaty, Russia must not have less than 1,500 nuclear warheads, but this decision is up to the political authorities of the country," Solovtsov told Interfax.

Russia and the United States are in talks on a new nuclear arms treaty that aims to reduce stockpiles below the 1,700-2,200 figure both sides already agree must be reached by 2012.

Barroso has long coveted a new mandate after his current term expires at the end of October, but he said he would only take on the job if EU member nations and the bloc's parliament endorsed his programme for Europe's future.     "This acceptance pre-supposes that the European Council (representing the member states) and European parliament embrace the ambitious programme that I will propose for Europe for the next five years," he said.

The oil price hit a new seven-month high today, fuelling suggestions that the world could soon see a return of the $100 barrel of crude.New York crude oil hit $71.65 a barrel this morning, up by more than one and a half dollars, to its highest level in 2009. The rise followed a $2 jump last night after America's energy forecasting agency raised its estimate for world demand.The oil price has more than doubled in the last four months on the back of speculation that the worst of the economic downturn may be over.

A young British dive instructor accused of having sex with her boss has been jailed for three months in the United Arab Emirates

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is due in Rome at the start of his first visit to Italy, Libya's former colonial ruler and now its biggest trading partner.

He is also due to address a group of 700 women at Rome's concert hall, having requested a meeting with prominent Italian women from the fields of business, politics and culture. He held a similar meeting on a visit to Paris in 2007 with 1,000 selected women guests, who were told he wanted to "save European women."

this is his first visit to Italy since he took power in a coup in 1969, following Italy's 30-year occupation of Libya.

Ahmadinejad still has strong support of the religious establishment and many of the poor, both inside and outside of the capital. "Our supporters are many and we don't have to gather in the streets like this," Hossein Ghorbani, a taxi driver in Tehran, said.

"I support Ahmadinejad because he is not stealing and is with the people. He cares about us."

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former Iranian president and a powerful figure in Iran's clerical leadership, on Tuesday urged the country's supreme leader to take action against Ahmadinejad over his remarks about the reformists. He wrote to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that millions of Iranians had witnessed "mis-statements and fabrications" in a televised election debate last week, when Ahmadinejad accused Rafsanjani of corruption. "I am expecting you to resolve this position in order to extinguish the fire, whose smoke can be seen in the atmosphere, and to foil dangerous plots," he said in the letter published by the semi-official Mehr news agency. Fourteen high-ranking clerics from the city of Qom, the supreme leader's base, echoed Rafsanjani's remarks, expressing "deep concern andregret" that Iran's image had been harmed in the debate. "Accusing those who were not present at that debate and could not defend themselves is against our religion," they said in a statement.

The Pacific nation of Palau says it has agreed to a US request to temporarily resettle up to 17 Chinese Muslims.The 17 men are ethnic Uighurs, now being held at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre on Cuba,

Palau, a former US trust territory, grants diplomatic recognition to Taiwan, not China.

Palau, with a population of about 20,000, is an archipelago of eight main islands plus more than 250 islets that is best known for diving and tourism and is located some 800 km (500 miles) east of the Philippines in the Pacific Ocean.

In an unprecedented public appeal, former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani urged the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to rein in the president, who in the debate last week accused Rafsanjani of corruption.

The outburst came as supporters of Ahmadinejad's most serious rival – the leading reformist contender Mir Hossein Mousavi – kept up the pressure with a second day of mass rallies.

Khamenei, who had previously backed Ahmadinejad, last week also rebuked the president for his remarks in the debate.

China is planning a vast increase in its use of wind and solar power over the next ­decade and believes it can match Europe by 2020, producing a fifth of its energy needs from renewable sources, a senior Chinese official said yesterday.

Zhang Xiaoqiang, vice-chairman of China's national development and reform commission, told the Guardian that Beijing would easily surpass current 2020 targets for the use of wind and solar power and was now contemplating targets that were more than three times higher.In the current development plan, the goal for wind energy is 30 gigawatts. Zhang said the new goal could be 100GW by 2020.

"Similarly, by 2020 the total installed capacity for solar power will be at least three times that of the original target [3GW]," Zhang said in an interview in London. China generates only 120 megawatts of its electricity from solar power, so the goal represents a 75-fold expansion in just over a decade.

The first Guantanamo detainee who is to be tried in a US civilian court has arrived in New York, officials say.

Ahmed Ghailani has been transferred to face charges in a New York court in connection with the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa.

The BBC's Rob Watson says the case of Ahmed Ghailani is, in many ways, one of the least problematic for the administration. He was first charged in 1998 after an extensive FBI investigation and there is therefore plenty of evidence against him.

The Obama administration signaled Sunday that it was seeking a way to interdict, possibly with China’s help, North Korean sea and air shipments suspected of carrying weapons or nuclear technology.

The administration also said it was examining whether there was a legal basis to reverse former President George W. Bush’s decision last year to remove the North from a list of states that sponsor terrorism.

So far it is not clear how far the Chinese are willing to go to aid the United States in stopping North Korea’s profitable trade in arms, the isolated country’s most profitable export. But the American focus on interdiction demonstrates a new and potentially far tougher approach to North Korea than both President Clinton and Mr. Bush, in his second term, took as they tried unsuccessfully to reach deals that would ultimately lead North Korea to dismantle its nuclear arsenal. Mr. Obama, aides say, has decided that he will not offer North Korea new incentives to dismantle the nuclear complex at Yongbyon that the North previously promised to abandon.

North Korea's yearslong use of scare tactics as a bargaining chip to secure aid and other concessions — only to later renege on promises — has worn thin the patience of five nations negotiating with Pyongyang, said U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates.   "They create a crisis and the rest of us pay the price to return to the status quo ante," Gates told the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual meeting of defense and security officials. "As the expression goes in the U.S., I'm tired of buying the same horse twice."   "There are other ways perhaps to get the North Koreans to change their approach," Gates said. "I think this notion that we buy our way back to the status quo ante is an approach that I personally at least think we ought to think very hard about."

Additionally, the U.N. Security Council is drafting financial and military sanctions against North Korea as punishment for the weapons testing.   Similar sanctions approved after Pyongyang's 2006 atomic test have been only sporadically enforced, and largely ignored by China and Russia.

South Korean Defense Minister Lee Sang-hee said the talks "could not have come at a better time."   "North Korea perhaps to this point may have mistakenly believed that it could be perhaps rewarded for its wrong behaviors," Lee told reporters. "But that is no longer the case."

China has defended the use of new screening software that has to be installed on all computers.Foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said the software would filter out pornographic or violent material.

All computers sold in China - even those that are imported - will have to be pre-installed with the "Green Dam Youth Escort" software.

The directive says the newest version of the software has to be pre-installed on Chinese-made computers before they leave the factory. Imported computers must contain the software before they are sold.

Computer makers in China have been instructed to pre-install blocking software on every PC hard drive from next month, under a government push to control access to the internet.The new software, which has been developed by companies working with the Chinese military, is specifically aimed at restricting online pornography, but it could also be used to strengthen barriers to politically sensitive websites.

China's authorities currently block overseas-based sites they disapprove of, such as those relating to Tibetan independence, or the Falun Gong spiritual movement, with a mesh of filters and keyword restrictions, widely known as the Great Firewall.

The new software – called Green Dam Youth Escort – potentially adds a powerful new tool at the level of the individual computer. It updates a list of forbidden sites from an online database, much as network security programs automatically download the latest defences against new worms, trojans and viruses.The software, designed to work with the Microsoft Windows operating system, also collects private user data.

The morning after the night before, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen was either defiant or in denial. The veteran Danish centre-leftist and former prime minister heads the PES, or Party of European Socialists, that groups all the mainstream social democratic movements of the EU."To those who announce a profound crisis in European socialism", he declared yesterday, "I say no."

"Our voters stayed away. They simply didn't see the relevance of these elections. They did not see the political choices at European level ... we had a European alternative, but it was not visible enough."

"This is a meltdown for the centre-left," said Professor Simon Hix of the London School of Economics, who has been running an EU-wide poll-tracking project for the election. Hugo Brady of the Centre for European Reform said: "There is a structural crisis for the centre-left, whether they are unpopular incumbents or in opposition. They have been routed."

"Our nuclear deterrent will be a strong defensive means ... as well as a merciless offensive means to deal a just retaliatory strike to those who touch the country's dignity and sovereignty even a bit," the state-run Minju Joson newspaper said in a commentary carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

Separately, a man reported to be the eldest son of the North Korean ruler, Kim Jong-il, added weight to reports that his youngest brother would succeed his father."Well, I hear the news by media. I think [it's] true," Kim Jong-nam said in an interview with the Japanese broadcaster TV Asahi. "My father loves very much my brother as his son. I hope he can do his best for North Korean people for their happiness and better life."

Kim Jong-nam had been considered the favorite to succeed his father, but reportedly fell out of favour due to his wayward lifestyle. In 2001, he was caught trying to enter Japan on a fake passport and reportedly told officials he wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland. His mother was the late actress Sung Hae-rim.

Mousavi, 67, who was Iran's prime minister during the 1980s, has a reputation for being incorrupt. He has surprised analysts by emerging as a serious challenger to Ahmadinejad and is thought likely to coast to victory in Tehran, while the incumbent is strong in the countryside and small towns.

The contrast between the camps could not have been starker. Mousavi supporters are predominantly young and urbane. Many of the young women in the chain would be accused by conservatives of wearing "bad hijab" – meaning their compulsory head covering is only loosely attached.

"Ahmadinejad has done nothing good for our country," said Neda Ahmadi, 24, wearing blue eye make-up and a tight-fitting jacket and jeans beneath her hijab. "Musawi can improve Iran's relations with other countries and focus on our own people's needs."But Lida, another 24-year-old woman, who was at the president's rally, called him "a truthful man who leads a simple life". Iran she said, "has not been isolated but is showing itself as it wants other countries to see it".

Royal Dutch Shell has agreed a $15.5m (£9.7m) out-of-court settlement in a case accusing it of complicity in human rights abuses in Nigeria.It was brought by relatives of nine anti-oil campaigners, including author Ken Saro-Wiwa, who were hanged in 1995 by Nigeria's then military rulers. The oil giant strongly denies any wrongdoing and says the payment is part of a "process of reconciliation". The case, initiated 13 years ago, had been due for trial in the US next week.

The lawsuit alleged that Shell officials helped to supply Nigerian police with weapons during the 1990s.

It claimed that Shell participated in security sweeps in parts of Ogoniland and hired government troops that shot at villagers who protested against a pipeline. It was also alleged that Shell helped the government capture and hang Ken Saro-Wiwa and several of his colleagues.

German intelligence agencies believe al-Qaida is planning attacks on Germans abroad and possibly in Germany ahead of the September 27 general election as revenge for Germany's military mission in Afghanistan and to put pressure on Berlin to withdraw its forces

The assessment is based on a warning by the US government that the leadership of al-Qaida in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan has decided to attack Germany, and that the North African branch of al-Qaida -- al-Qaida of the Islamic Maghreb -- has been tasked with carrying it out.

Germany's domestic intelligence agency (the Office for the Protection of the Constitution) and the BKA Federal Criminal Police Office believe that German company offices in Algeria and German citizens across North Africa are especially at risk. But authorities are also warning about possible attacks on German soil.