San Francisco  - Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on Wednesday ruled out a new takeover bid for troubled web portal Yahoo, but stressed that the software giant was still interested in partnering with Yahoo on search-related products.

Washington  - President-elect Barack Obama on Wednesday unveiled who will develop his key policy priorities during the transition as US media speculated on his potential cabinet picks for health, justice and the top US diplomat.

Former president Bill Clinton has opened up his books to the Obama transition team in an effort to pave the way for his wife Hillary Clinton to get the job of secretary of state, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Taipei  - Taiwan has donated 18.2 million US dollars to the Central American Integration System (SICA) to be spent on cooperation projects, Taiwan's Central News Agency (CNA) said on Wednesday.

Taiwan signed the agreement on six cooperation projects at SICA's foreign ministers' meeting held in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa on Tuesday, CNA said.

Costa Rica, which is a SICA member but cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan to recognize China in June 2007, did not send its foreign minister to the SICA meeting.

Quoting Honduran Foreign Minister Angel Edmundo Orellana Mercado, CNA said the pact covers improving agriculture and fishery, wiping out livestock diseases and promoting social developments.

Islamabad  - Four Islamic militants were killed Wednesday in a missile strike by a suspected pilotless US aircraft, while 17 Taliban and four civilians died in actions by local security forces in north-west Pakistan, officials and media reports said.

One of the two missiles fired presumably by a US drone hit a house in the Jani Khel semi-tribal area of the Bannu district in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP).

The pre-dawn airstrike destroyed a mud compound that belonged to a Taliban militant named Dilber, alias Parpand, a local intelligence official told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, on the condition of anonymity.

Washington  - The man regarded as second-in-command of terrorist group al-Qaeda condemned US president-elect Barack Obama Wednesday in the group's first audio message since his election, using racial slurs and calling his victory an "admission of defeat" in Iraq.

Ayman al-Zawahiri said Obama was "the direct opposite of honourable black Americans" like Malcolm X, a controversial figure who preached violence during the US civil rights movement in the 1960s.

Bonn, Germany  - A David-and-Goliath takeover offer for the German factories of General Motors sent the share price of the bidding company, SolarWorld, crashing 16 per cent lower Wednesday.

SolarWorld, which assembles and installs smaller electricity generating systems that rely on wind or the sun, asked GM to give it four factories, a German research centre, the Opel brand and 1 billion euros (1.25 billion dollars).

The Bonn-based company said it would inject an additional 1 billion euros of its own cash and loans to convert Opel into "Europe's first green automobile maker," designing cars with low- emission engines.