TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – Iran’s president stood fast Saturday behind his decision to resume uranium enrichment research, shrugging off threats of international sanctions while his Foreign Ministry invited Europe and the U.N. nuclear watchdog back to the negotiating table.

In a ringing defense of his government’s move, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tehran had not violated the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which he said allows signatories to produce nuclear fuel.

On Tuesday, Iran removed some U.N. seals from its main uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, central Iran, and resumed research on nuclear fuel – including small-scale enrichment – after a 2½-year freeze.

Tehran claims it is only conducting research and says uranium enrichment remains suspended.

Women march; gays rally in Italy

ROME (AP) – Tens of thousands of women marched through Milan on Saturday to demand Italy keep its liberal abortion law intact while gays rallied in Rome to push for legal recognition for homosexual couples.

Both topics have become issues in Italy’s election campaign, and the Roman Catholic Church and ministers in Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s conservative government were scathing in denouncing the rallies.

“These demonstrators are really nauseating,” Reforms Minister Roberto Calderoli, a member of the right-wing Northern League, was quoted as saying by the Italian news agency ANSA. “Family is a serious thing, based on love between a man and a woman.”

Lawmaker could be in ‘Big’ trouble

LONDON (AP) – He has appeared on television screens hailing Saddam Hussein and excoriating U.S. senators.

But nothing prepared British viewers for the sight of maverick lawmaker George Galloway lapping up imaginary milk and purring like a cat.

Galloway’s eyebrow-raising antics on the reality TV show “Celebrity Big Brother” prompted calls Friday for his censure, with a senior government legislator accusing him of “a shameful lack of respect” for his constituents.

Galloway, who founded the Respect Party after he was expelled from Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labour Party for opposing the Iraq war, has spent a week in the camera-studded “Big Brother” house, alongside a collection of celebrities including former NBA star Dennis Rodman, ex-“Baywatch” actress Traci Bingham and topless model Jodie Marsh.

Galloway, 51, said before he joined the show that his appearance would be “good for politics” and was a chance to reach a young audience.

Ex-Taliban leader killed by gunman

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – Gunmen killed a former Taliban leader Mohammed Khaksar, who renounced the hard-line Islamic regime after it was ousted in late 2001 and had since supported Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed government, witnesses said Saturday.

A suicide car bomb, meanwhile, wounded an American soldier when it blew up near a U.S.-Afghan military convoy traveling along a main southern Afghan road, a local police chief said.

Khaksar’s brother, Abdullah Jan, and the city police chief, Gen. Abdul Wahid, confirmed the killing.