Reuters World News Highlights

SEOUL – North Korea warned its tough-talking neighbour yesterday against holding more firing drills near a disputed  maritime border off the west coast of the peninsula, accusing  the South of being “hell-bent to set off a war”.
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BEIJING – China is hopeful of “positive results” in the U.N.  climate talks in Cancun, its chief negotiator to climate change  talks said in comments published by state news agency Xinhua yesterday.
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GENEVA – Six world powers are due to hold their first talks  with Iran in more than a year today, hoping the meeting will  lead to new negotiations over a nuclear programme the West  believes is aimed at making atom bombs.
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WASHINGTON – Senior U.S. lawmakers said yesterday they were  optimistic about striking a deal to extend Bush-era tax cuts for  all taxpayers and continue emergency jobless aid for millions of  long-term unemployed Americans.
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BRUSSELS – Euro zone finance ministers meeting today  will face pressure to increase the size of a 750 billion euro  ($1,006 billion) safety net for crisis-hit members in order to  halt contagion in the single currency bloc.
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KHOST, Afghanistan – A suicide bomber killed two foreign  soldiers and two Afghan civilians in a bazaar outside a NATO  base in southeast Afghanistan yesterday and wounded nearly 20,  NATO and Afghan officials said.
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ISTANBUL – Turkey still expects Israel to apologise and  “clean the blood” spilled when nine Turkish activists were  killed by Israeli commandos on a Gaza-bound ship, its prime  minister said yesterday. – – – –

MOSCOW – Three Russian satellites crashed into the Pacific  Ocean yesterday after a failed launch, in a setback to a Kremlin  project designed as a rival to the widely used U.S. GPS  navigation technology.