US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who battled with Bush administration hawks over the Iraq war, resigns and senior officials said national security advisor Condoleezza Rice would take his place. Iraq Gunfire and air strikes rocked the restive city of Baquba as violence raged across Iraq, despite a major assault on Fallujah where US-led forces hunted out final pockets of resistance. Iraq An audiotape on an Islamist website, purportedly from Iraq's most wanted man Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, urged his supporters to brace for new battles against US forces after the showdown in Fallujah. Iran The UN atomic agency said in a report it had no proof so far of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program but could not yet conclude definitively that there was no covert activity. ICoast The UN Security Council voted unanimously to impose an immediate arms embargo on Ivory Coast, as the exodus of foreign nationals from the troubled west African nation gathered pace. UN Ambassadors from the UN Security Council will head to Kenya for a rare meeting outside New York aimed at pressing for an end to Sudan's long-running civil war and the separate crisis in Darfur. India Suspected Muslim rebels shot dead six people in Kashmir in a single attack a day ahead of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to the restive region, police said. Thailand Thailand's premier denied foreign extremists were involved in an insurgency in the kingdom's Muslim-majority south amid concerns the violence could spread. Australia A high-speed passenger train carrying more than 160 people jumped the rails and crashed in eastern Australia, injuring most of those on board, officials said. Japan Japan said it wanted Russia to return all four Kuril islands, snubbing Moscow's renewed talk of returning two of them to end the dispute that has prevented the countries from formally ending World War II. Serbia-Kosovo Three ethnic Albanians went on trial in an unprecedented case at the UN war crimes court, charged with murder, torture and inhuman acts against Serb and Albanian civilians in Kosovo in 1998. Nigeria Nigeria's central labour movement and a coalition of civil society groups suspended a nationwide general strike due to begin at midnight.