World Highlights

¤ Talks between Iran and the European Union's big three powers ended with an agreement to hold more negotiations next month aimed at easing concerns about Iran's atomic programme, an Iranian official said. Yesterday's 'talks on talks' in Vienna between France, Britain and Germany and Iran were aimed at determining whether there was a basis for further discussion between the two sides.

¤ The US Senate approved a budget Bill that would cut spending on social welfare and other programmes by $39.7 billion, but only altering it slightly to force the House of Representatives to reconsider it, possibly late next month or in February.

The Senate needed the help of Vice President Dick Cheney to pass the budget Bill. As president of the Senate, he voted for the Bill, breaking a 50-50 tie.

¤ Senate Democrats succeeded in blocking, for now, oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which Republicans sought to add to a massive $453 billion war-time military spending bill.

The ANWR refuge, which sprawls along Alaska's northern coast and may hold 10 billion barrels of oil, has been the focus of bitter wrangling in the US Congress for more than two decades.

¤ The US economy grew a bit less robustly in the third quarter than previously thought and prices picked up, the government said in a report that showed consumers beginning to rein in their spending.

Gross domestic product, or total output within US borders, expanded at a 4.1 per cent annual rate in the July-September quarter, the Commerce Department said in its final estimate of growth for the period.

¤ Former US lobbyist Jack Abramoff is negotiating a guilty plea with the US government in a corruption probe, two people familiar with the investigation said, in a move that could spell trouble for Republican lawmakers.

A deal by Mr Abramoff could further ensnare Ohio Republican Bob Ney, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, and other lawmakers who are also being investigated by the Justice Department for their ties to the former lobbyist.

¤ Israel said it would ban East Jerusalem Arabs from voting in a Palestinian election next month if militant Islamic group Hamas takes part - a move Palestinian officials said could delay the vote.

Israel allowed Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem to vote in Palestinian Authority elections in 1996 and at the start of the year when they elected Mahmoud Abbas president.

¤ Oil workers were on their way to extinguish a huge pipeline blaze in remote southern Nigeria, caused by a suspected dynamite attack that killed at least eight people.

Royal Dutch Shell, which operates the pipeline in the Niger Delta that was attacked on Tuesday by unknown gunmen, raised its initial estimate of lost production by 10,000 barrels per day.