Washington - The United States is reviewing existing free- trade deals and will take other countries to task for adopting illegal trade barriers, the country's top trade official said Tuesday.

US Trade Representative Ron Kirk said the administration was developing a list of countries and programmes that violate international trade law and is prepared to take offenders before the World Trade Organization or other bilateral forums.

Jerusalem - Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu is returning to the Israeli premiership exactly one decade after he was voted out of what has been described as one of the world's most difficult jobs.

His first term between 1996 to 1999 - when he lost elections to Labour Party leader Ehud Barak, now a key coalition partner - saw a pronounced slowdown in the implementation of the Israeli-Palestinian Oslo peace accords, a process Netanyahu did not support.

Tel Aviv  - Her Kadima party may have won the most seats in Israel's February 10 election, but as the Israeli government is sworn in, Tzipi Livni finds herself the big loser, moving from the high- profile foreign ministry to the opposition front bench in parliament.

At least for the short term.

Tel Aviv  - New Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may have achieved his aim of forming a broad-based unity coalition, but this does not guarantee him a premiership free of challenges.

Coalition requirements forced him to form a government with 30 ministers - so large that ministries had to be split to accommodate all the demands from various partners.

This, in turn, led to huge dissatisfaction inside his own right- wing Likud party, with senior legislators unhappy that the top cabinet posts were parceled out to coalition partners.

Washington - US legislators on Tuesday unveiled far-reaching climate legislation that would boost incentives for renewable energy and for the first time force companies to pay for pollution that is blamed for global warming.

The draft bill, introduced in the Energy and Commerce Committee in the US House of Representatives, marks the first step in what promises to be a long and contentious battle in Congress.

Islamabad - Pakistan will ask the Friends of Pakistan (FoP) forum to provide 30 billion dollars of assistance over a period of 10 years when the group meets in Tokyo on April 17, a senior Pakistani government official said on Monday.

Sardar Aseef Ahmed Ali, the deputy chairman of Pakistan's Planning Commission, told reporters his country would seek 22 billion dollars in financial assistance and another 8 billion dollars in foreign direct investment during the upcoming ministerial level meeting of the FoP.