The European Union on Monday slapped fresh sanctions on Belarus and Iran in protest at human rights violations, diplomats said.

The sanctions, agreed at talks between the EU's 27 foreign ministers, target 16 people allegedly involved in rights abuse in Belarus and 29 in Iran with an assets freeze and travel ban.

Six police officers were killed in a suspected drug gang attack in the northern Mexican state of Zacatecas, after they were ambushed when driving home from a party, a report said Monday.

The policemen were returning to the city of Valparaiso in the early hours of Sunday after attending a festival in a nearby town, when they were held up by a group of gunmen who assaulted their vehicle with heavy weapons, said the Jornada newspaper on its website.

France's opposition Socialists boasted Sunday that a strong turn-out in their primary was an early victory in the battle to oust Nicolas Sarkozy, but failed to choose a clear winner of their own.

As expected, 57-year-old former party leader Francois Hollande was in first place but, with most polling stations reporting, he had only 39 percent of the vote and was on course to face a tight run-off vote.

Sudan has set deadlines to resolve outstanding disputes with the south, President Omar al-Bashir said Sunday, as a top-level southern delegation wrapped up its first visit to Khartoum since independence.

"We have agreed to have committees and have given them deadlines to reach a solution on all the pending issues," Bashir told a news conference, standing alongside South Sudan's President Salva Kiir.

China's president on Sunday used the centennial of a revolution that ended imperial rule to make an appeal to further relations with Taiwan, saying they should move beyond the history that divides them and focus on common economic and cultural interests.

At a ceremony in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Hu Jintao said that China and Taiwan should end antagonisms, "heal wounds of the past and work together to achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation."

Experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived in the Japanese city of Fukushima on Sunday to observe the massive decontamination effort following the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

Local doctors also began a long-term survey of children for thyroid abnormalities, a problem associated with radiation exposure. Officials hope to test some 360,000 people who were under the age of 18 when the nuclear crisis began in March, and then provide follow-ups throughout their lifetimes.

Two powerful explosions believed to be from home-made bombs ripped through a motel and a cock-fighting arena in the southern Philippines on Sunday, wounding 11 people, police said.

The first explosion at noon tore through the ground floor of the two-story Red Palm inn in Zamboanga, a port city in the troubled southern island of Mindanao, where Islamist militants operate.

Poles went to the polls Sunday in a general election, with Prime Minister Donald Tusk aiming for a landmark second term and pushing a message of prudent economic stewardship which kept the nation out of recession.

Pro-European centrist Tusk, whose Civic Platform (PO) won a snap vote in 2007, has warned against a return of the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party which clashed regularly with EU allies when it was in power.

Polls opened on Sunday in France's first open U.S.-style primary election, with the left-wing opposition choosing a candidate to take on an increasingly vulnerable President Nicolas Sarkozy next year.

Voters are deciding who will lead the Socialist Party, with former leader Francois Hollande appearing at the head of a pack of six frontrunners.

George W. Bush says that after eight years in the White House, he's happy to be back home in Texas and out of the spotlight.

But the former commander-in-chief tells The Associated Press there's one aspect of his presidency he still misses: interaction with U.S. troops. And Bush, who sent them to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, says that despite his desire to remain largely out of the public eye, he wants to make sure veterans and military members know they still have his support.