■ <B>MOSCOW. Action on Iran must be ?proportionate? </B>

International action over Tehran?s nuclear programme must be in proportion to the real situation in Iran, RIA news agency quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying yesterday. ?It is necessary to act on Iran but that action should be in direct proportion to what is really happening,? the agency quoted Lavrov as saying. ?And what is really happening is what the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) reports to us. And the IAEA is not reporting to us about the presence there of a threat to peace and security.?

■ <B>BEIJING. AIDS spreading beyond China high risk groups </B>

AIDS in China has spread beyond high risk groups such as injecting drug users, prostitutes and homosexuals and the country is becoming ?like Africa? in how the virus is transmitted, a senior health official says. ?There are 190 new HIV infections every day ... and in some high-prevalence areas, nearly one percent of pregnant women are infected with HIV,? said the deputy director general of the Chinese bureau of diseases prevention and control. ?We?re now like Africa. Last year, we found that 48 per cent of those who were newly infected contracted the disease from sex, so it?s not a disease that afflicts only high-risk groups.?

■ <B>NABLUS. For Palestinians, this Ramadan is the worst ever </B>

In all his 40 years as a butcher in the West Bank city of Nablus, Amin Abu Zant cannot recall a Ramadan so grim. Neither can Hasan Naana, a vegetable seller, nor Munder Hindiya, a gold trader. The Islamic holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset but celebrate in the evenings with family around the dinner table, has fallen this year at a time when little is going right for the Palestinians. A Western aid embargo imposed on the Hamas administration has left government wages largely unpaid since March. Fighting between the Hamas Islamist movement and the rival Fatah faction has killed 18 people this month, sparking fears of civil war. Peace talks with Israel remain a remote prospect, while the Jewish state presses ahead with an offensive in the Gaza Strip to free an abducted soldier and stop militants firing rockets. Such a joyless Ramadan is being felt most acutely in the shops and markets of Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

■ <B>PARIS. No knockout blow seen in French Socialist TV debate </B>

The three contenders to lead France?s Socialists into next year?s presidential elections got through their first debate ahead of party primaries without any knockout blows, media commentators judged yesterday. Segolene Royal (photo) was generally considered to have kept her status as frontrunner after Tuesday night?s encounter with the two ex-finance ministers Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Laurent Fabius, although some commentators said Strauss-Kahn had performed best of the three in the debate itself. ?Segolene Royal was running the biggest risk because she?s the least experienced and because she leads the race,? said veteran RTL radio commentator Alain Duhamel. ?I thought she didn?t make any mistakes.? The first of six planned debates, held in a rigidly structured format that did not allow direct interchanges between candidates, was ?studious, serious, dragged on a bit and wasn?t television for two cents,? conservative daily Le Figaro said.

■ <B>IVORY COAST. Gbagbo faces curb on powers.</B>

African heads of state have recommended that Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo stay in office for another year until the country can hold elections. The eight leaders also said that Prime minister Charles Konan Banny should be given more power, including control over the armed forces. The rebels seized the north of the country in 2002, accusing Mr Gbagbo of discriminating against northerners. Polls this month were delayed with militias and rebels still not disarmed.

■ <B> BUENOS AIRES, Violent clashes mar Peron burial.</B>

Rival Argentine union groups battling with sticks and bottles on Tuesday marred a ceremony to bury former President Juan Peron for the third time since his death in 1974. The violence erupted hours after thousands of Argentines packed the streets of Buenos Aires to pay tribute to Peron ? famous for his marriage to ?Evita? ? as his coffin was led in a caravan to a new mausoleum at his former weekend retreat. Unions and leaders of the Peronist party were behind the move, aiming to make his burial place more befitting one of the country's leading figures.But as supporters awaited the arrival of Peron's body, dozens of union activists hurled rocks at each other, unleashing scattered clashes.