Mideast The Israeli cabinet approved the evacuation of a first batch of three Gaza Strip settlements despite the shock resignation of Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the landmark pullout. Iraq At least 35 people were killed in attacks across the country as Iraq's president announced a series of meetings of political leaders to negotiate issues holding up completion of the new constitution. China Rescuers were trying to reach more than 100 miners trapped in a flooded coal mine in southern China, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported. Britain Police brought their first substantial charges over last month's London terror attacks this weekend, as another suspect was deported to Britain from Zambia exactly a month after the first deadly blasts. Iran Iran insisted there was no going back from its decision to resume uranium conversion in defiance of the European Union, despite an upcoming meeting of the UN nuclear watchdog and warnings of an international crisis. Russia Seven exhausted Russian sailors returned to dry land after a dramatic operation by a British undersea robot freed their mini-submarine three days after it became trapped on the Pacific Ocean floor. Italy Italian aviation experts were searching for clues to why a Tunisian-operated charter plane crashed-landed at sea off the Sicilian coast, killing 13 people and leaving three still missing. Mauritania The ruling military council set up after a coup in the northwest African state of Mauritania freed around 20 alleged Islamic extremists jailed by the ousted regime, including a leader with alleged links to a pro-Al-Qaeda group in neighbouring Algeria. US Discovery's astronauts were upbeat as they readied for re-entry into the atmosphere, but remembered Columbia's crew who lost their lives at that critical stage of the mission. US The top US military commander in the Middle East has outlined a plan to reduce US forces in Iraq by some 20,000 to 30,000 troops by the middle of next year, The New York Times reported. NKorea North Korean nuclear weapons talks were broken off for three weeks with no sight of progress over Pyongyang's insistence on having atomic reactors for energy, a demand the United States rejected. SAfrica South Africa's leading mining union was set to hit the world's top gold producer with its largest strike in 18 years.