World Highlights

¤ Prime Minister Ariel Sharon narrowly won a vote of his ruling Likud against rival Benjamin Netanyahu trying to oust him as party leader as punishment for Israel's Gaza pull-out, an exit poll showed. Israel launched multiple missile strikes in Gaza in response to Palestinian rocket fire.

¤ Iran threatened to restart uranium enrichment and to stop allowing UN snap inspections of its atomic facilities, unless moves to send it to the UN Security Council were reversed. The International Atomic Energy Agency on Saturday passed a resolution requiring that Tehran be reported to the council for possible sanctions, after Iran failed to convince the world its atomic ambitions were entirely peaceful.

¤ Togo's security forces were mostly to blame for violence surrounding elections in April in which 400 to 500 people were killed, the United Nations said in a report questioned as hasty by the Togolese government.

¤ Parts of the US Gulf coast lurched back to life after Hurricane Rita, although many areas remained buried under rubble or water after the onslaught of a second major storm in less than a month. Evacuees streamed back into Houston, the fourth-largest US city, although shops were low on bread, milk and other perishables, power outages continued, and gasoline supplies remained spotty. US oil companies began recovery efforts to Gulf of Mexico refineries and offshore production infrastructure in the wake of Hurricane Rita - the second major storm in a month to strike at the heart of the US energy industry.

¤ China and Vietnam scrambled to evacuate nearly half a million people from the path of a typhoon which killed six people as it swept across the southern Chinese resort island of Hainan.