US Hurricane Katrina killed at least 54 people in the southern US state of Mississippi, a Mississippi newspaper reported. US Rescue crews work frantically to help hundreds of people stranded by floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the US Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Iraq US President George W. Bush expressed optimism about Iraq though hundreds of Sunni Arabs carrying posters of toppled dictator Saddam Hussein took to the streets protesting a newly drafted constitution. NKorea North Korea's official media lashed out at the United States and South Korea for conducting joint military exercises it blamed for delaying a resumption of six-party talks. Afghanistan The United Nations counter-narcotics chief said Afghanistan had reduced the production and cultivation of opium for the first time since the Taliban regime fell in 2001. China China and the United States began a fourth round of talks aimed at regulating rocketing volumes of Chinese textile shipments, as a spat with Europe over the same issue rumbled on. Mideast Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Israel will not hold onto all its West Bank settlements, less than a week after overseeing an historic pullout from parts of the occupied Palestinian territories. Saudi-Iraq Saudi security forces exchanged fire in the eastern region of Jubail with four Iraqis "who infiltrated into the kingdom to steal cars and smuggle them (to Iraq)," the first incident of its kind, an interior ministry spokesman said early Tuesday. France-Belgium Acting in response to a series of civil aviation disasters, both France and Belgium published a list of airlines banned from their airspace for safety reasons. Iran Iran announced it had made another breakthrough in its controversial nuclear programme by successfully using biotechnology to extract purer uranium from its mines.