A backstage struggle among Iran’s ruling clerics burst into the open when the government said it had arrested the daughter and other relatives of an ayatollah who is one of the country’s most powerful men.

IRAN’S supreme leader last night sternly warned of a crackdown if protesters continue days of massive street rallies, escalating the government’s showdown with demonstrators demanding a new presidential election.

IRANIAN opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi issued a direct challenge to the country’s supreme leader and cleric-led system last night, calling for a mass rally today to protest disputed election results and violence against his followers.

Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi has issued a direct challenge today to the country’s supreme leader and cleric-led system, calling for a mass rally to protest disputed election results and violence against his followers.

US President Barack Obama has told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he must stop Jewish settlements and should grasp the “historic opportunity” to make peace with the Palestinians.

An American journalist jailed in Iran has been convicted of spying and sentenced to eight years in prison just days after she was tried behind closed doors, her lawyer said today.

The chief defence lawyer of the British teacher convicted by a Sudanese court for insulting Islam expected her to be pardoned with the visit of a delegation of British Muslims today.

An Iranian court acquitted a former nuclear negotiator of spying charges today but convicted him of acting against the Islamic government.

An al-Qaida-linked insurgent group has posted a video it claims shows the body of a US pilot killed in Iraq last year, a photograph of his identification card and brief footage of his aircraft’s wreckage site.

The inmate who died at Guantanamo Bay in an apparent suicide was identified today as a Saudi military veteran and self-described Islamic holy warrior who denied he ever intended to kill Americans.

Somalia's Ethiopian-backed government and its rivals in an Islamic movement fought to a bloody standstill today, and geared up for a major push as fearful villagers fled.

Radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has agreed to allow supporters to rejoin the Iraqi government after a three-week boycott, officials close to the militia leader said, as political rivals pushed to form a coalition without him.

Final results today showed Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's opponents have won elections for local councils.

Fighting broke out today between Somalia’s government troops and rival Islamic militia near where an EU envoy was meeting with senior leaders to press for peace talks.

Turkey must expand freedom of expression, open its ports to Greek Cypriot ships and planes and bring its powerful military under civilian control, the EU’s chief expansion official said today.

An 11,000-strong assault is to be launched on militants in the southern mountains of Afghanistan, the biggest offensive since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

A ceasefire today allowed residents to venture into the streets of a northern Mogadishu neighbourhood that has been a battleground for more than a week in Somalia.

Rival militias pounded one another today in a seventh day of fighting for control of a neighbourhood north of the capital Mogadishu, and residents feared the battle could spread to other parts of Mogadishu and push the death toll beyond 150.

Five Islamic militant groups, including al-Qaida in Iraq, issued a joint statement today denouncing upcoming Iraqi elections as a “satanic project” that violates God’s law and vowed to continue their war to establish an Islamic government in the country.

Iran has expanded the tunnels it uses to hide a major part of its nuclear weapons programme to a network covering a large area of south-eastern Tehran, an Iranian exile who opposes that nation’s Islamic government said.

Iran has banned American and other films that promote Western culture in a move to combat what the Islamic government called attempts to “damage and humiliate eastern traditions and culture”, state-run television reported today.

Iraq’s interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is forming a broad coalition to fight to keep his job after the dominant Shiite political party nominated a conservative for the post.

Suffering continues in war-ravaged western Sudan. But to the south, after 21 years of conflict, things are looking up.

AN Irishman was shot dead yesterday at his office in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh, the Government confirmed last night.

The Government is tonight investigating claims one of its citizens had been killed in Saudi Arabia.

THE head of the American hostage murdered by militants last month has been found after a raid on the hideout of an al-Qaida leader in Saudi Arabia.

POLITICAL leaders have praised Sudan's peace agreement between the Islamic government and Christian and animist rebels bringing an end in sight to Africa's longest-running war.

SUDAN'S government and Arab militias are waging a joint "scorched-earth" campaign of murder, rape and looting of non-Arab ethnic communities in western Sudan, displacing over one million people, Human Rights Watch has said.

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami acknowledged the failure of the pillars of his presidency today, conceding his two key reform proposals that sought to check the powers of hard-liners could not be salvaged.

A voice purported to be Osama bin Laden saluted resistance groups fighting the US occupation in Iraq and warned Iraqis not to work with the Americans, in a new audiotape broadcast by Al-Jazeera.

A two-year-old boy was the only survivor of a plane crash in Sudan today that killed 116 passengers and crew.

President George Bush has warned that he and other world leaders will not tolerate nuclear weapons in Iran and he urged Tehran to treat protesters seeking to oust the Islamic government with “the utmost of respect.”

The leader of the largest Shiite Muslim group that opposed Saddam Hussein today called for a democratic government to rule Iraq.

A FORMER Iraqi intelligence official allegedly linked to al-Qaida has been captured by US forces, American officials said yesterday.

Opposition groups in Sudan have cautiously welcomed a deal to try resolve Africa's longest-running civil war.

Taliban leader Mohammed Omar is reported to be in northern Afghanistan, urging his troops to fight the Northern Alliance.

The Taliban says Osama bin Laden is alive after the latest raids on Afghanistan.

Anti-aircraft fire crackled in the night sky over Kabul, signalling the start of a second night of attacks by the US and British coalition.

Sudan's deputy defence minister and 13 other high-ranking military officers have been killed in a plane crash in southern Sudan.