The head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation is to travel to Vienna on Monday for talks with the head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, the official IRNA news agency said, reports AFP.

REUTERS, MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan - Afghan authorities have discovered a mass grave containing at least 100 bodies believed to be victims of a Taliban massacre in the 1990s, security officials said on Saturday.

The grave was discovered in the northern province of Balkh, about 15 km from the city of Mazar-i-Sharif.Provincial security official Abdurrauf Taj said about 100 bodies had been found in the grave, which is about 100 metres from a residential area.

AFP, LONDON - Top children's writers including Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling have signed an open letter calling on world leaders to take urgent action over Darfur to protect the stricken region's children.

The letter by the 15 authors, also including Judy Blume and Cornelia Funke, was released Saturday ahead of Sunday's Global Day For Darfur organised by rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

AFP, MOSCOW - South Korea's first astronaut, Yi So-Yeon, was to star Saturday in celebratory sing-song aboard the crowded International Space Station (ISS) as back on Earth Russia marked the 47th anniversary of sending the first man in space.

Yi, 29, docked Thursday along with Russian cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko after a successful Soyuz space capsule journey from the Russian cosmodrome at Baikonur in ex-Soviet Kazakhstan.

AFP, BOAO - Chinese President Hu Jintao met here Saturday with Taiwan's vice president-elect Vincent Siew, according to a pool report, in the highest-level contact ever between the two sides.

The meeting is being viewed as the first major test of the ability of the incoming administration in Taiwan to improve relations with China, from which it split in 1949 after a civil war.

REUTRERS, London - A gold encrusted dagger once owned by the Indian emperor who built the Taj Mahal has sold for more than 1.5 million pounds ($3 mln) at auction in London -- three times its expected price.

The dagger, once part of Shah Jahan's royal collection, was made in the early 17th century, just after the Mughal emperor came to power.

REUTERS, KATHMANDU - Nepal's Maoist former rebels took a shock early lead on Saturday in an election aimed at cementing a peace deal that ended a decade-long civil war.

Early tallies from Thursday's elections showed the Maoists, who say they are committed to democracy but are still classified as a terrorist organisation by the United States, were leading in 61 out of 121 constituencies where counting had begun.

Iran denied Friday that it faced any "technical problems" in expanding its controversial nuclear programme, which the West fears could be diverted towards weapons development, reports AFP.

"There are no technical problems regarding the development of centrifuges," deputy head of Iran''s Atomic Energy Organisation, Mohammad Saeedi told the state IRNA news agency.

Russia will ask its foreign partners in June to extend the exploitation of the International Space Station (ISS) until 2020 as the station''s Russian segment would take longer to complete, Russian space officials said, reports AFP.

"We can do what we planned to do by 2010 only in 2015, and so we will have to appeal to our foreign partners to use the ISS until 2020," the chief of Russia''s space RKK Energiya company, Vitaly Lopota, said Thursday as quoted by the Interfax news agency.

President Musharraf and his Chinese counterpart President Hu Jintao Friday vowed to enhance cooperation in defence, energy and trade and hoped that these would be further strengthened as a new Pakistani government came into power, according to UNB.

The talks in the Chinese city of Sanya covered a wide variety of issues with a particular focus on Pak-China bilateral relations besides discussions on regional issues and international developments.

Japan on Friday extended sweeping sanctions against North Korea for another six months, saying the communist state has not shown progress in impasses over its nuclear drive and abductions of Japanese, reports AFP.

The sanctions-which ban all imports from cash-strapped North Korea including money-making goods such as clams, crabs and high-end matsutake mushrooms-were set to expire on Sunday.

REUTERS, KATHMANDU - Porters carried ballot boxes on their backs along mountain paths high in the Himalayas on Friday, to trucks, tractors and helicopters waiting to take them to counting centres after Nepal's first election in nine years.

On the streets of the capital Kathmandu, relief was mixed with pride, after a historic election passed off in a remarkably peaceful manner on Thursday.

AP, ATLANTA -- Air traveler angst was sure to continue Friday as American Airlines grounded hundreds more flights.

The financial toll and loss of goodwill likely would grow as well, as the inspection-related mess spread further to other carriers and hurt an industry already bleeding cash thanks to high fuel costs.

REUTERS, COLOMBO - Fighting in the far north of Sri Lanka in the past week killed 58 people, mostly Tamil Tiger rebels, the military said on Friday.

The fighting in the northern districts of Jaffna, Vavuniya, Polonnaruwa and Mannar came after a suspected rebel suicide bomber killed the country's highways minister and 13 others attending a marathon race near the capital on Sunday.

ROME (AFP) - Soaring cereal prices are a growing threat to world peace and security and to the human rights of developing countries facing food crises, the head of the UN food agency warned Friday.

"I'm surprised I have not been summoned to the UN Security Council, since many problems discussed there do not have the same consequences for peace and security in the world and the human rights of people who need to be fed," Jacques Diouf told a news conference in Rome.

AFP, BLANTYRE - Tough conditions should be attached to pop star Madonna's adoption of a Malawi boy, a human rights group said Friday, warning unscrupulous traffickers may use the case to justify illegal adoption.

Maxwell Matewere, a spokesman for the Human Rights Consultative Committee, which attempted to legally challenge the controversial adoption, said a Malawi court should attach "tough guidelines" if it grants Madonna permanent custody.

REUTERS, YANGON - Knife-wielding robbers killed a bank employee during a holdup at a state-owned bank in Yangon, Myanmar's biggest city, police said on Friday.

Two other bank employees were wounded in the attempted robbery at a branch of the Myanmar Economic Bank by two unknown men on Tuesday night.

Reuters - Nepal went to polls on Thursday to elect a constituent assembly, the centrepiece of a 2006 peace deal between the government and the former Maoist rebels, who ended their civil war and joined electoral politics.

The following is a chronology of how the Maoist war began and the march towards peace:

AFP, BEIJING - China bluntly told the world Olympics chief Thursday to keep out of politics, in a tart exchange on human rights following days of protests that have shadowed the Olympic torch around the world.

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said the Games were in "crisis" following the demonstrations, and urged China to respect its pledge to improve its rights record before the event begins in August.

AFP, MOSCOW - South Korea's first astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts docked their Soyuz spacecraft with the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday, a Russian official said.

"The docking took place," a spokeswoman for Russian mission control near Moscow told AFP. "The hatch between the spacecraft and the station will open" between 1550 and 1610 GMT, the spokeswoman said.