IRAN-NUCLEAR TALKS

VIENNA - The U.S. and Iran are making last-minute progress at nuclear talks but will need to extend negotiations to next month, Western diplomats said Monday. Their comments jibed with word that negotiations had now turned two track, with the sides still racing to reduce differences at the negotiating table while already working on the modalities of how long to extend the talks.

ITALY-EBOLA

MILAN - The Italian health ministry says an Italian doctor working in Sierra Leone has tested positive for the Ebola virus and will be transferred to Rome for treatment. The ministry said in a statement that the doctor, who works for the non-governmental organization Emergency, will arrive in Italy overnight Monday for treatment at the Lazzaro Spallanzani National Institute for Infectious Diseases in Rome. It is Italy's first confirmed case of Ebola.

GERMANY-ART-TROVE

BERLIN - A Swiss museum agreed on Monday to accept a priceless collection of long-hidden art bequeathed to it by German collector Cornelius Gurlitt, but said it will work with German officials to ensure any pieces looted by the Nazis from Jewish owners are returned. German authorities in 2012 seized 1,280 pieces from Gurlitt's apartment while investigating a tax case, including works by Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall. Gurlitt died in May, designating Switzerland's Kunstmuseum Bern as his sole heir. 

RUSSIA-GEORGIA

MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin is expected to sign an agreement with the leader of Abkhazia that will tighten Russia's control over the breakaway Georgian region on the Black Sea. Georgia has denounced the agreement as in effect annexation and said it will further hinder efforts to normalize relations with Russia.

ITALY-ROME-MAYOR'S-MESS

ROME - Pigs root through garbage piling up in a working class neighborhood. City buses improvise routes on streets clogged with triple-parked cars. On rainy days, muck-choked sewers make crossing the road a Herculean labor. Ignazio Marino promised to bring order to Rome's chaos when he was elected mayor in a landslide last year. Instead, critics say the liver transplant surgeon is the affliction not the cure - and are pressuring him to resign. 

CZECH-POISONED ENVELOPES

PRAGUE - An envelope mailed to the Czech Republic's finance minister contained poison, the second such case in a week, an official said Monday. Tests conducted on the suspicious envelope to minister Andrej Babis detected "a deadly amount of a dangerous poison," according to Radek Pokornik, a spokesman for the National Institute for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Protection.

BRITAIN-TERRORISM

LONDON - U.K. authorities are outlining a new set of counterterrorism measures, including a ban on insurance companies reimbursing ransom payments. The bill to be outlined Monday by Home Secretary Theresa May reinforces Britain's long-held position that there should be no ransom payments to terrorists because payments to groups such as Islamic State merely place more people at risk.