Highlights

¤ Frenchman Yves Chauvin and Americans Robert Grubbs and Richard Schrock won the 2005 Nobel Chemistry prize for showing how to tailor-make molecules for cheaper, cleaner chemicals and drugs to combat major diseases.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded them the 10 million crown ($1.3 million) prize for work in metathesis, where molecules "dance round and change partners" to create new molecules.

¤ Torrential rains and flooding from Hurricane Stan killed six people in southern Mexico after claiming more than 70 lives in Central America.

Rivers washed away a major bridge and ripped apart houses and buildings when they burst their banks in the city of Tapachula, on Mexico's southern border with Guatemala.

¤ Oil steadied near $64 after losing more than $2 a barrel this week as investors grew more convinced high energy bills were crimping consumption and Washington offered to tap emergency reserves.

But some analysts argued demand for oil remained strong and that a bull-run could resume as tight supplies of winter fuel are threatened by the closure of hurricane-battered US refineries and strikes by oil workers in France.

¤ The African Union mission in Darfur is prepared to produce film and pictures to prove Sudan's security forces are attacking civilians there, despite Khartoum's denials, the AU mission chief said.

Baba Gana Kingibe, leader of an AU team monitoring a shaky ceasefire, told reporters he had confidence in an AU report that all parties to the conflict were breaking the truce and that the violence had included attacks by government helicopter gunships.

¤ The Tajik Supreme Court jailed a top opposition leader for 23 years on an array of charges and his supporters said the aim was to stop a rival to President Imomali Rakhmonov before elections next year. The court found Democratic Party leader Makhmadrouzi Iskandarov guilty of eight crimes, including terrorism, banditry and illegal possession of arms, a court official told Reuters.

¤ British Defence Secretary John Reid said Iraqi insurgents would launch more "vicious" attacks on coalition forces and civilians ahead of a general election for a new government in December.

Mr Reid also warned that Islamic insurgents were trying to spark a civil war by murdering scores of Shi'ites, who constitute the majority in the country.