Asia The United Nations secured 717 million dollars in record time for tsunami victims in Asia and said military restrictions were not hampering aid workers in Indonesia as they pressed ahead with emergency relief. Asia The death toll from last month's earthquake and tsunamis that devastated Indian Ocean coastlines rose to 158,860 as Indonesia added another 1,261 to its list of fatalities. Iraq Prime Minister Iyad Allawi acknowledged that some parts of Iraq would not be able to take part in this month's election as new attacks killed at least 25 people, six of them in a car bombing in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit. Mideast Israelis and Palestinians prepared for a resumption of dialogue between their top leaders after a four-year hiatus as a long-awaited streamlining of the sprawling Palestinian security services was unveiled. Mideast Chinese President Hu Jintao pledged support for new Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and said Beijing would do all it could to help solve the Mideast problem, state media said. EU-Iran The EU said it will resume trade talks with Iran this week after Tehran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment, but the bloc vowed to keep up pressure in areas of concern including the Islamic state's nuclear plans. US US President George W. Bush nominated an appeals court judge, Michael Chertoff, to head the vast agency tasked with preventing terrorist attacks on the United States. EU-US The EU and the US agreed to shelve WTO action and seek a negotiated settlement regarding subsidies for Airbus and Boeing, avoiding what the EU said would have been a "disastrous" legal clash. Canada Canada said it had detected a third case of mad cow disease, and for the first time the infected beef cow was born after a ban on ruminant feed introduced in 1997 to check the spread of the disease. US Rescuers dug mud with shovels and bare hands in a search for survivors buried under landslides in California unleashed by almost two weeks of heavy storms that have killed at least 15 people. Australia Nine people were confirmed dead and 15 unaccounted for in Australia's deadliest bushfires for 20 years as firefighters battled blazes raging in two states and threatening a third.