Bolton have yet to make a decision on whether to sign former Brazil international Denilson despite suggestions to the contrary by the player’s brother and agent.

Followers of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr trickled in to police stations in a Baghdad slum district to hand in weapons today under a deal seen as a key step toward ending weeks of fighting with US and Iraqi forces in the Shiite militant stronghold.

UN inspectors hunting for banned weapons of mass destruction that Iraq may be hiding visited a missile plant south of Baghdad that had aroused US suspicions.

International arms inspectors revisited one of the “hot zones” of Iraq’s biological weapons programme today, peering into holding tanks and checking the ground and outbuildings to see whether military research had resumed.