The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was under pressure to perform a U-turn on petrol rationing yesterday after the restriction prompted violent protests at filling stations across the country this week.

The EU has kept Iran opposition group PMOI on its new list of terrorist entities in a controversial move likely to spark complaints from MEPs as well as Danish and Italian parliamenterians.

The Russian special services are operating in Poland very aggressively, and threat from their party is considerably high, the chief of military counterespionage of Poland Anthony Matserevich said.

The PACE hears one of the most controversial reports in its history Mikhail Zygar. European lawmakers hear a report on CIA secret prisons – and Chechnya; The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has heard a report on CIA secret prisons in Europe.

With the George W Bush administration under pressure to close the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Pakistan is readying to step in to help its ally in the “war on the terror”.

The Venezuelan president is visiting Russia, apparently shopping for hardware to boost its military against the USA. Vladimir Putin welcomed Hugo Chavez for talks at the presidential retreat outside Moscow, saying economic affairs and military-technical co-operation were on the agenda.

Five US soldiers have been killed in an attack on a patrol in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, the US military has said.

The Iranian government’s last-minute decision to ration monthly fuel allotments, as well as increase the price of gas, triggered protests and riots — a rarity in the Islamic republic — according to Iranian media reports.

Financier Ashraf Marwan, 62, the son-in-law of former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, had been named by Israeli officials as a source for the country’s intelligence service Mossad. Scotland Yard is treating his death in Carlton House Terrace as “unexplained”.

The Egyptian government announced plans on Thursday to ban all female circumcision, the widely-practised removal of the clitoris which just days ago cost the life of a 12-year-old girl.