Sunday

Hezbollah rocket attack kills ten

Hezbollah has fired an enormous barrage of rockets at towns across northern Israel, killing at least ten people and wounding 20 others, rescue services said. One of the rockets hit a building in the northern town of Kfar Giladi, causing many injuries, rescue officials said. Army Radio said a synagogue was also hit and there were fatalities in the barrage. "There are several wounded, many of them in very serious condition," Eli Bean, director of the Magen David Adom rescue service, told Israel's Channel Two. Witnesses reported the barrage was going on more than 15 minutes after it had begun. One rescue service reported at least two rockets directly hit homes.
US and France agree UN resolution

The US and France have agreed on a draft UN Security Council resolution that seeks a full halt to fighting in Lebanon. This breaks a three-week impasse caused partly by Washington's refusal to press Israel to end its offensive against Hezbollah. Despite the agreement, fighting raged on. Israeli naval commandos struck the southern port of Tyre before dawn, while Israeli air raids killed at least eight people across Lebanon and a rain of Hezbollah rockets on northern Israel killed three civilians.

Iran defies UN on nuclear programme

Iran has vowed to expand - not suspend - uranium enrichment activities in defiance of a UN Security Council resolution giving the Islamic Republic until August 31 to halt nuclear activities or face the threat of political and economic sanctions. Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani called the UN Security Council resolution issued last week "illegal" and said Iran won't respect the deadline. "We reject this resolution," he said.

57 die in China tropical storm

The death toll from Tropical Storm Prapiroon jumped to 57, with 16 more people missing, after the storm knocked down houses and set off landslides and flash floods in China, news reports said. Hardest hit was Guangdong province, where 38 people have been killed since Prapiroon roared ashore on Thursday. In neighbouring Guangxi region to the west, 19 people were killed, including six migrant farm workers whose shelter was swept away by a flash flood in the city of Laibin, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Egyptian group 'joins al Qaida'

Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader said in a new video that an Egyptian militant group has joined the terror network, the first time that al Qaida has announced a branch in Egypt, the Arab world's most populous nation. The Egyptian group, Gamaa Islamiya, is apparently a revived version of the biggest militant group that waged a campaign of violence in Egypt during the 1990s but was crushed in a government crackdown. "We announce to the Islamic nation the good news of the unification of a great faction of the knights of the Gamaa Islamiya ... with the Al-Qaida group," Ayman al-Zawahri, the deputy leader of al-Qaida said in the videotape aired on the Al-Jazeera news network.

Castro 'coming along well'

Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage sought to dispel growing speculation about Fidel Castro's health, saying he does not have stomach cancer and is recuperating well after surgery that prompted him to step aside temporarily. "He is coming along well. He does not have stomach cancer," Lage told reporters during a visit to Bolivia for the opening of a constitutional assembly. "He's been made well by the operation and is recuperating favourably."

Pair held over US serial shootings

One of the two suspects in a series of apparently random late-night killings that terrorised residents of Phoenix, Arizona, discarded a trash bag in which police found a map with red and blue dots representing the locations of the attacks, court documents said. The bag also contained an expended .410-gauge shotgun shell and a piece of paper referring to serial violence, according to a probable cause statement. The trash bag had been tossed into a bin at the suburban Mesa apartment complex where Dale S Hausner and Samuel John Dieteman lived, the report said. The men, accused of shooting two dozen people, including six fatally, were arrested late on Thursday after police tailed them for a week.

Nato soldier killed in Afghan crash

One Nato soldier was killed and three injured when their armoured jeep crashed in southern Afghanistan, a Nato statement said. The crash, in Kandahar province where four Canadian troops were killed earlier in the week, was not caused by enemy action, the statement said. The soldiers were accompanying a supply convoy, it said.