DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh and India on Monday signed an extradition treaty and struck a deal to relax business visa restrictions between the neighboring countries. The extradition treaty could pave the way for Bangladesh to put on trial several crime bosses who crossed the border into India but are still running their gangs by telephone, a senior official at Bangladesh's Home Affairs Ministry told Reuters. It could also help India bring back fugitive separatists who have fled to Bangladesh including Ulfa leader Anup Chetia. ...

PARIS (Reuters) - France needs more robust local policing, better intelligence sharing and the ability to infiltrate small radical Islamist groups if it hopes to fight new security threats at home, France's top anti-terrorism judge told Reuters. Paris' centralized intelligence system - which for nearly two decades helped protect France from a major terrorist attack until a radical Islamist killed seven people last year - is designed to target organized groups like al Qaeda but not the new breed of individuals posing a threat, Marc Trevidic said. ...

By MICHAEL FALCONE (@michaelpfalcone) NOTABLES: IMMIGRATION REFORM TAKES CENTER STAGE: A bipartisan group of senators has agreed to an immigration reform framework that includes a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented, a significant step toward a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s immigration system, ABC News-Univision’s...

SANTA MARIA, Brazil (Reuters) - Relatives of the 231 people who died in a Brazilian nightclub fire demanded answers on Monday as to how it could have killed so many people, while police questioned the club's owner and members of the band whose pyrotechnics show allegedly caused the tragedy. Several coffins, many draped with flags of the victims' favorite soccer teams, lined a gymnasium that has become a makeshift morgue since the fire in the early hours on Sunday, one of the world's deadliest such incidents in a decade. ...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin has dismissed the head of Russia's southerly Dagestan province, the Kremlin said on Monday, signaling concern over mounting Islamist violence, corruption and political rivalries in the Caucasus. Putin appointed Magomedsalam Magomedov, 49, to a role in the presidential administration, the Kremlin statement said, removing him from a post that he had held since 2010. Ramzan Abdulatipov, 67, a veteran politician elected last year as deputy head of the ruling United Russia party in the lower house of parliament, was named acting head of Dagestan. ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A gauge of business confidence improved in December, a sign that business worries over tighter fiscal policy may not have held back investment plans as much as feared at the end of 2012. The Commerce Department said on Monday that non-defense capital goods orders excluding aircraft, a closely watched proxy for investment plans, edged 0.2 percent higher. Many economists believe businesses held back on capital spending late last year because of uncertainty over government spending cuts and tax increases that had been scheduled to kick in this month. ...

POMEZIA, Italy (Reuters) - Comic Beppe Grillo calls four-time Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi a "dwarf zombie", outgoing premier Mario Monti "rigor Montis" and Italy's political class "the walking dead". Grillo, founder of a movement that will rival even the biggest parties at elections next month, hopes to wipe out the old guard: "We will bring some exorcists to parliament," he said in an interview after a rain-drenched rally south of Rome. The 64-year-old Grillo is quick with wisecracks but the his 5-Star Movement is no joke. ...