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By Tom Heneghan PARIS (Reuters) - Embattled French leaders urged students and trade unions on Saturday to negotiate after President Jacques Chirac's move to water down a disputed youth job law failed to end weeks of demonstrations and violence. Leaders of the nation-wide protests rejected a dialogue call by Chirac on Friday evening when he announced that he would sign the disputed law, and his proposed amendments did not seem enough to change their minds. Chirac's long-awaited speech met with ...

By Gideon Long and Sue Pleming BLACKBURN (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met Muslim leaders in Blackburn on Saturday in a trip during which protesters expressed anger that an architect of the Iraq war was on their home turf. About 200 noisy protesters waited for Rice and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw at town hall, chanting "Condoleezza Rice Go Home" and "No War". "They (protesters) have their freedom of speech and I'm glad they did it," said Mayor Yusef Janvirmani, who sho ...

The police are investigating overnight trouble in County Antrim. Officers were called to the Dunclug estate in Ballymena at about 1230 BST on Friday where a crowd had gathered. Police said there was evidence of a disturbance. Several people taken to hospital but their injuries were not thought to be life-threatening. A couple of hours later, a petrol bomb was thrown at a house in Victoria Park but no one was injured. Police are investigating a motive for the attack. The petrol bomb was extin ...

By Arthur Asiimwe NYUNGWE FOREST, Rwanda (Reuters) - Surviving a rebel attack and braving crocodile-infested waters, a group of explorers has completed an 80-day voyage down the world's longest river reaching what they say is the source of the Nile. The three explorers from Britain and New Zealand claim to be the first to have travelled the river from its mouth to its "true source" deep in Rwand ...

By Julian Linden MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Jenson Button survived a "manic" final qualifying session on Saturday to snatch pole position for the Australian Formula One Grand Prix. Button managed to safely the chaos of several accidents, traffic jams and foul weather to lap Melbourne's Albert Park circuit in one minute, 25.229 seconds to capture his third career pole and Honda's first in 38 years. Italian Giancarlo Fisichella, last year's winner, clocked the second best time to join Button on the  ...

Twentieth Century Fox has confirmed that popular animated TV series The Simpsons is to be made into a film. The movie will be released in the United States in July 2007. A 25-second trailer for the film has been shown to US audiences at screenings of Ice Age: The Meltdown, promising to introduce "the greatest hero in American history". It then cut to Homer Simpson, wearing only his underwear, who admitted: "I forgot what I was supposed to say." The Simpsons revolves around the antics of bald ...

A shot has been fired during an armed robbery at a hotel in Belfast city centre. It happened at about 1900 BST on Friday when two men burst into the Days Inn on Hope Street. They threatened staff and demanded money. They made off with an undisclosed sum of money in a red vehicle. No one was injured. Police are appealing for anyone who witnessed the incident to contact them.

Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho remains confident his side's nine-point lead over Manchester United is too great for Sir Alex Ferguson's side to close. "It could be a pivotal weekend if Chelsea were to drop points," said Ferguson, whose team play Bolton. But Mourinho, told Chelsea TV: "Nine points behind I think is a big gap. "If I was in their position, I'd be happy with the last couple of months, where they're winning matches, but concerned about the distance." Chelsea play Birmingham on Saturd ...

(CNN) -- Nations around the world are offering aid to Iran after an earthquake killed at least 66 people and injured more than 1,400 in the western part of the nation. Friday's quakes were centered near Borujerd and Doroud, two industrial cities about 210 miles southwest of Tehran, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported. Provincial official Ali Barani said about 200 villages were damaged, some flattened, The Associated Press reported. U.S. President George W. Bush offered humanit ...

WEST COLLEGE CORNER, Indiana (AP) -- Seven months a year, Deano's Tavern cashes in on Indiana's refusal to observe daylight-saving time. Ohio residents whose bars close at 2:30 a.m. can go four miles up the road to Deano's for another hour of drinking before last call. "That worked out pretty good for us," said Scott Cline, a bartender at the pub in this community of about 600 residents on the Indiana-Ohio line. That advantage will disappear after Sunday, when Indiana begins observin ...