Honduras At least 22 people were killed when a bus was strafed by machine gun fire, in what police suspect was a message from local gangs to an aspiring crime-busting presidential candidate. Britain The euro surged to a fresh record high point of 1.3543 dollars in European trading and economists saw further falls ahead for the US currency. Iraq US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made a surprise dawn visit to US troops in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul as investigators probed a devastating suicide attack on a US army base. Iraq Some Fallujah residents decided against returning to their war-battered city when fighting erupted for a second straight day in the former rebel stronghold. Mideast Three armed Palestinian militants were killed in a shoot-out with Israeli soldiers at the Tulkarem refugee camp in the northern West Bank, a Palestinian security source said. Mideast Tens of thousands of Christian worshippers descend on Bethlehem for the annual Christmas mass, while Palestinians await the results of the first municipal elections in three decades. Thailand Two people were killed and at least seven wounded in the latest bomb attack blamed on Islamic separatists in insurgency-hit southern Thailand, police and hospital officials said. Japan Japan threatened retaliation against North Korea such as cutting off economic ties unless the communist state returned Japanese people it has kidnapped or gave a "sincere response" on their fate. US The world's first commercially-cloned pet, a nine-week-old kitten, has been delivered to a US woman who paid 50,000 dollars for a copy of her beloved dead cat, the cloner said.