Iraq Britain agreed to move crack troops closer to Baghdad to aid efforts to crush rebel strongholds, as a US soldier at the heart of the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison was jailed for eight years and expelled from the army. EU Incoming European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso stuck by his controversial pick for EU justice chief despite opposition from lawmakers threatening to veto the new EU executive next week. Nigeria Nigerian prosecutors charged three senior military officers and a Lagos businessman with plotting to shoot down President Olusegun Obasanjo's helicopter and topple his government in a violent coup. China An underground gas explosion which ripped through a mine in central China killed at least 60 workers and left 88 missing in one of the country's worst mining disasters in recent memory, officials said. Japan Japan was searching for survivors after the country's deadliest typhoon in more than a decade killed at least 61 people as it crushed houses, overturned trains and stranded passengers on flooded highways. Cuba President Fidel Castro, Cuba's leader for more than 45 years, broke his left knee and right arm in a fall, but urged the Caribbean country's 11 million people to stay calm, the government said. Iran Iran will pursue talks in a few days with Europe's three major powers, an Iranian official said after Britain, France and Germany asked Tehran to reassure the world that it was not secretly developing atomic weapons. Sudan African Union sponsored peace talks on the crisis in the western Sudanese region in Darfur opened in the presence of delegates from the Khartoum government and two rebel groups. Lebanon Lebanese President Emile Lahoud named former premier Omar Karameh to form a new government following the resignation of Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri a day earlier, an official said. Britain Prince Harry, fast gaining a reputation as Britain's most unruly royal, was involved in a scuffle with a photographer outside a London nightclub, palace officials and witnesses said. Switzerland The world's population is consuming about 20 percent more natural resources than the planet can produce, the environmental organisation WWF International warned in its "Living Planet" report.