Home Secretary Alan Johnson announced that in a bid to crackdown on system abuses, the number of visas UK granted to foreign students would be reduced.

According to the tougher rules, applicants would be required to speak English to a certain level, including being banned from bringing dependents if they were only there on short UK courses.

The new rules were not meant to discourage genuine students, only those who came to UK primarily for work, and follow a review ordered after the failed Chicago plane bombing.

The budget will affect the Bulgarians in a way that 2010 years will be worse than 2009.

This was announced by the former energy minister Petar Dimitrov on Radio Focus. He explained that in a state of crisis the state should support businesses but in the new budget the resources destined to combat the crisis have been greatly reduced or even cut off. Dimitrov added that having been attracting investors, the country has committed to build infrastructure, which is an incentive measure, but the budget allocation for infrastructure has been reduced three times.

Spanish police overnight detained 36 suspected supporters of the militant Basque separatist group ETA, police sources said Tuesday. The suspected members of the illegal youth organization Segi were held in the northern Basque region and neighbouring Navarre.

The detainees included several suspected leaders of Segi. Police searched 34 addresses, and were looking for three more suspects.

The Spanish judiciary has increased pressure on organizations linked to ETA, which has killed more than 820 people since 1968.

United Nations Security Council members said Monday the political situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina has further deteriorated because of continued divisions in the top leadership in Sarajevo. A report by High Representative Valentin Inzko, the envoy from the European Union, said a "series of obstacles, delays and failures" have prevented progress in settling disputes over political leadership, the constitution and implementing the 1995 Dayton Peace agreement.

"All of these failures - and let me say the word all - are the consequences of political differences and obstructionism," Inzko said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel sees "good prospects" for Serbia's attempts to join the European Union despite disagreements over the status of Kosovo. Merkel was speaking at a joint press conference with Serbian President Boris Tadic, who was received in Berlin Monday to meet with the chancellor as well as German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle and business leaders.

A Kosovo Albanian politician campaigning for Sunday's local elections was shot at Thursday night, but escaped unhurt, a police spokesman said. Hysni Ahmeti, an opposition candidate for the post of mayor in the ethnic hotspot town of Mitrovica, was on a way to a campaign event when his car was sprayed with bullets, police spokesman Besim Hoti said.

The car sported several bullet holes after the attack, but Ahmeti, an official in former premier Ramush Haradinaj's Alliance for the Future of Kosovo party was not hurt.

Myanmar's ruling junta Saturday sent its "liaison minister" to hold talks with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, raising hopes for a political dialogue, government and opposition sources said.

Relations Minister Aung Kyi met with Suu Kyi at her house-cum-prison in Yangon for 50 minutes Saturday afternoon, a government official, who asked to remain anonymous, confirmed.

In October 2007, Aung Kyi was appointed as a special relations minister by junta supremo Senior General Than Shwe to deal with Suu Kyi in the wake of a brutal army crackdown on monk-led protests in Yangon.

Maoist rebels blew up railway tracks in India's eastern states of Jharkhand and West Bengal Saturday at the start of a 24-hour strike they called to protest the arrests of some senior leaders, news reports said.

Tracks were blown up in the early hours of the morning in Chakradharpur area of Jharkhand and Purulia in West Bengal disrupting long-distance rail traffic on the Kolkata-Mumbai route, the PTI news agency reported.

In Jharkhand, Railway Police official Richard Lakra said the rebels had blown up 18 metres of rail track. "No one was injured," Lakra said.