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TEHRAN (Reuters) - The European Union's top diplomat will on Saturday hand Iran an offer of trade and other benefits from world powers if it suspends nuclear enrichment, which the Islamic Republic has repeatedly refused to do.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey and Syria are considering setting up a joint energy company and could build joint nuclear power plants for electricity, Syria's oil minister was quoted as saying on Friday.

Simon Denyer is India bureau chief for Reuters, with responsibility also for Nepal and Bhutan. He has visited Nepal a dozen times in the last four years, covering a Maoist insurgency, the power grab of King Gyanendra, pro-democracy protests and the peace process. In the following story, he recounts the scene at Gyanendra's farewell news conference and his reflections.

PARIS (Reuters) - Donors led by the United States pledged about $20 billion in aid to Afghanistan on Thursday but said Kabul must do far more to fight corruption.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Support for Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's cabinet rose in a public opinion poll released on Friday, but more than half wanted the leader to call an early election after he suffered a non-binding censure motion.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The United Nations and NATO rushed on Thursday to iron out snags in the troubled international security presence for Kosovo, just days ahead of its constitution coming into force.

GAZA (Reuters) - Hamas's military wing said on Friday an explosion that killed eight Palestinians in the Gaza Strip was an accident that occurred as militants prepared to carry out a bomb attack.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - At least four people died on Friday in Russia's volatile Chechnya and Dagestan provinces in what police said were rebel attacks, Russian media reported.

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain and Malaysia tightened security on Thursday to stop strikes against soaring global fuel prices turning violent, as well as snarling road networks and slowing deliveries of food and raw materials.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union, opening up a new transatlantic trade spat, will investigate whether soaring imports of U.S. biodiesel break global trade rules because of subsidies, the EU's executive Commission said on Friday.

PARIS (Reuters) - A possible Irish rejection of the European Union's Lisbon treaty should not stop other member states ratifying it, a French minister said on Friday.

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean truckers extended their strike on Friday over high fuel costs, adding to President Lee Myung-bak's woes just past 100 days in office, but a threatened major anti-government protest fizzled out.

MANILA (Reuters) - A cameraman in a three-member television team kidnapped in the southern Philippines has been freed and there is a good chance the other two will be released on Friday, officials said.

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe said on Friday liberation war veterans would take up arms if he loses a June 27 presidential run-off vote.

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombian President Alvaro Uribe on Thursday offered not to extradite a FARC guerrilla in exchange for the release of hostages after a rebel contact reached out to authorities about a deal.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Haitian lawmakers rejected President Rene Preval's nominee to become prime minister on Thursday, in another blow to his efforts to establish a stable democracy in the impoverished Caribbean country.

GAZA (Reuters) - An explosion destroyed a Hamas bomb-maker's house in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing at least four people, including a baby, in what Hamas called an Israeli air strike and Israel described as an internal blast.

LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - A convoy of Pakistani lawyers set off on Thursday on the last leg of a cross-country rally, vowing to lay siege to parliament unless judges fired by President Pervez Musharraf last year get their jobs back.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Thursday against nearly 10,000 victims of human rights abuses during the regime of Philippine ruler Ferdinand Marcos in a dispute over $35 million in an account held by the late dictator.

NAIROBI (Reuters) - The two main parties in Kenya's coalition government retained their parliamentary balance on Thursday in by-elections that avoided the violence which erupted after the two sides clashed over a December presidential poll.