Lebanese prime minister Fuad Saniora today rejected his Israeli counterpart Ehud Olmert’s call for direct peace talks between the two countries.

The hut of thatch walls was as rickety and windblown as any other in Zamzam Camp for refugees on the sand dunes of western Sudan, but dozens of men and boys squeezed inside to watch the TV broadcasts of the World Cup.

ARABS were torn between seething rage at images of a US soldier shooting dead a wounded Iraqi in a mosque and dismay at Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah for turning holy mosques into battlegrounds.

US forces reopened two strategic bridges today in the heart of Baghdad and crowds of looters surged across – taking advantage of access to new territory that had not already been plundered.