Tunisia’s interim government has refused to legalise five political parties, including three Islamic ones – the first such rejections since the country’s longtime autocrat was driven from power.

TENS of thousands of Palestinians in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip demonstrated yesterday against the Middle East peace conference in the US, while the Islamic militant group’s leader insisted it was “doomed to failure”.

A protester against the Annapolis peace conference was shot dead by Palestinian police loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas today.

Egypt has agreed to release three British Islamic fundamentalists after they spent nearly three years in prison for membership in a banned religious party, a prison official said today.