Iraq Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said the government has "new plans" to crush the deadly insurgency and restore security, in an address to Iraq's interim parliament on his return from a foreign tour. Iraq Britain's Foreign Secretary Jack Straw paid a surprise visit to Iraq amid new controversy over why the United States and Britain went to war against Saddam Hussein's regime. Sweden US scientists David J Gross, H David Politzer and Frank Wilczek won the 2004 Nobel Physics Prize for developing a theory that explains quarks, nature's tiniest building blocks, the Nobel jury said. Mideast Israeli troops pressed on with their offensive in the Gaza Strip as the United Nations was set to vote on a resolution calling for halt to the onslaught that has killed almost 80 Palestinians. Iraq Poland, one of the main pillars of the US-led coalition in Iraq, will soon fix a date for the withdrawal of its 2,500 troops, its defence minister said, the day after he surprised Washington by promising a pullout by the end of 2005. Iran MPs in Iran's hardline-dominated parliament gave preliminary approval of a bill aimed at forcing the reformist government to resume uranium enrichment in defiance of the UN nuclear watchdog, the state news agency IRNA reported. Russia Russia called for the creation of a new regional financial intelligence body to choke off funding for terrorist activities and vowed to offer more practical cooperation with global organizations doing the same. Chechnya Chechnya swore in its latest pro-Moscow president, Alu Alkhanov, five years into the republic's latest separatist war, while tanks and nervous gun-toting soldiers secured the shelled-out capital. Lebanon Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri held consultations to form a national unity cabinet but prospects to woo the opposition dimmed amid international pressure to end Syria's domination of Lebanese politics. France Greenpeace demonstrators chained themselves to a truck near a nuclear treatment facility in western France in a bid to stop an imminent shipment of US military-grade plutonium reaching the plant, resulting in several arrests. Italy A court in Milan opened preliminary hearings into the collapse of Italian food giant Parmalat and ordered two former auditors at the company to stand trial at the end of January.