Riga - The prime minister of Belarus, Sergey Sidorski, took advantage of his new-found freedom to travel Wednesday by visiting neighbouring Latvia in his first official trip to a European Union member state since travel restrictions on members of the Belarusian government were lifted on October 13.

Transport and business were on the agenda when Sidorski met his Latvian counterpart, Ivars Godmanis, but no mention was made of sensitive issues such as human rights or missile systems.

Madrid  - French police Wednesday detained two suspected members of the militant Basque separatist group ETA, Spanish police sources said.

The two were captured during a routine police check as they were cycling near Tarascon-sur-Ariege in the south of the country. They were armed with a pistol and a revolver.

The suspects had documents related to ETA in their bags, the sources said. They also carried fake identity documents.

Baghdad - Two sisters in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul were among a dozen civilians killed in Iraqi violence on Wednesday, which included two bomb attacks in the capital Baghdad.

An unidentified gunmen shot and killed one of the two sisters in front of her house while she was waiting for the bus and then stormed the house and opened fire on the family, killing the other sister and injuring their mother, who was rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment," the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency quoted a police source as saying.

London - The global economic downturn must not be used as an excuse to delay urgent action on tackling climate change and securing energy supplies, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned Wednesday.

The call came as the Paris-based IEA published its annual World Energy Outlook in London which predicted that, at current trends, carbon dioxide emissions would rise by

Moscow - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will outline his proposal for a new "Euro-Atlantic security architecture" at an EU-Russia summit in Nice on Friday, a top Kremlin aide said Wednesday.

Medvedev first revived the Perestroika idea of a new security system "from Vancouver to Vladivostok" in his first foreign policy address in June. Western diplomats say they are open to the idea, but that the concept remains vague.

Gaza- Israeli troops killed four Palestinians in a fire- fight in the southern Gaza Strip Wednesday, further battering an already shaky five-month-old truce.

Palestinian witnesses said the four were killed in a series of airstrikes as the Israelis during the fighting, and Hamas said they had belonged to its military wing.

The Israeli military said in a communique that troops stationed on the border fence between the Strip and Israel had identified several gunmen attempting to place explosive devices.