US president George W Bush said last night he is sceptical that Moscow is honouring a cease-fire in neighbouring Georgia, demanding that Russia end all military activities in the former Soviet republic and withdraw all its forces.

American forces were on their way to Georgia tonight after President George Bush announced a massive humanitarian aid operation and warned Russia not to stand in its way.

Osama bin Laden’s former driver was jailed today after being convicted of supporting terrorism in the first US war crimes trial since the Second World War.

IRAN accused the United States yesterday of fabricating video and audio released by the Pentagon showing Iranian boats confronting US warships in the Persian Gulf.

THE Pentagon said yesterday it is working with Turkey to resolve a “serious problem” posed by the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, but declined to comment on a media report of secret plans to stop rebel violence.

Sporadic fighting between Lebanese troops and al-Qaida-inspired Islamic militants continued today in a northern Palestinian refugee camp as police, stepping up raids nationwide on suspected militant hideouts, made 13 more arrests.

The US Defence Department announced the capture of one of al-Qaida’s most senior and most experienced operatives, an Iraqi who was trying to return to his native country when he was captured.

The US Defence Department said today it has custody of one of al-Qaida's most senior and experienced operatives, an Iraqi who was attempting to return to his native country when he was captured.

Iraqi officials said today they were holding a top al-Qaida official, but not the terror mastermind Abu Omar al-Baghdadi who they believed was captured a day earlier.

An Italian judge today ordered a US soldier to stand trial for the fatal shooting of an Italian intelligence agent at a checkpoint in Baghdad, the prosecutor said.

US President George Bush called Saddam Hussein's execution a milestone on Iraq's road to democracy, but warned it would not halt the bloodshed and political discord splitting the country.

Members of Iraq’s parliament and families of Saddam Hussein’s victims will witness the former leader’s execution, planned to take place no later than tomorrow.

AFTER years of defending his secretary of defence, US President George W Bush last night announced Donald H Rumsfeld’s resignation within hours of the Democrats’ triumph in congressional elections.

A new army manual bans some prisoner interrogation techniques used by the US since the September 11, 2001 attacks and adds others the defence department thinks are necessary, officials said today.

North Korea has apparently finished loading fuel into a long-range ballistic missile, Bush administration officials said today as signs continued that the reclusive communist state will soon test a weapon that could reach the US.

US authorities will review the rules for handling and monitoring detainees at Guantanamo Bay following the suicides of three men there, military officials said.

North Korea reconfirmed today that it has nuclear weapons and demanded the United States give it “nuclear cooperation” instead of seeking to disarm it.

NEW images of naked prisoners, some bloodied and lying on the floor, threatened to revive public anger over abuse by US guards at Abu Ghraib prison at a time when tensions with the West are already running high in the Middle East.

New images of naked prisoners, some bloodied and lying on the floor, threatened to revive public anger over abuse by US guards at Abu Ghraib prison at a time when tensions with the west are already running high in the Middle East.

AN Australian television network yesterday aired previously unpublished video and photographs of what it said was the abuse of Iraqis in US military custody at Abu Ghraib prison in 2003.

The Pentagon’s inspector general is investigating claims that an office run by US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s former policy chief engaged in illegal intelligence activities before the start of the Iraq war.

IRAQ'S main Sunni Arab political party yesterday demanded an international investigation into allegations that security forces illegally detained and tortured suspected insurgents at secret jails in Baghdad.

Iraq’s prime minister disclosed today that more than 170 malnourished Iraqi detainees were found at an Interior Ministry detention centre and that some appeared to have been tortured.

BOMB blasts killed six US Marines in western Iraq yesterday and US forces killed 29 militants in offensives aimed at uprooting al-Qaida insurgents ahead of the country’s vote on a new constitution.

A new terror threat against the New York subway raised the spectre of an attack with explosives concealed in a baby stroller and prompted a show of force by the largest police department in the US.

A HELICOPTER belonging to a NATO-led security force yesterday crashed in Afghanistan, killing 17 Spanish servicemen.

The US Army, in a rare disciplinary act against a four-star officer, said today it relieved Gen Kevin Byrnes of his command in the midst of an investigation into unspecified “personal conduct".

The US military in Iraq has detained five Americans for suspected insurgent activity, Pentagon officials said. The five have not been chargd or had access to a lawyer, and face an uncertain legal future.

Rebels attacked a US military medical team as it was helping villagers in the same region of eastern Afghanistan where a US airstrike that killed up to 17 civilians sparked sharp criticism from the government.

A SUICIDE car bomber targeted a US military convoy in Fallujah, killing two Marines, a Pentagon spokesman said yesterday. Three marines and a sailor were missing.

Newsweek magazine has apologised to readers for errors in a story alleging US interrogators at Guantanamo Bay desecrated the Quran. The accusations, which the magazine vowed to re-examine, spawned protests in Afghanistan that left 15 dead and scores injured.

Newsweek magazine has apologised for errors in a story alleging that interrogators at the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay desecrated the Koran, saying it would re-examine the accusations, which sparked outrage and deadly protests in Afghanistan.

US forces searched a hospital in central Iraq after receiving a tip from an informant about possible terrorist activities there related to Iraq’s most wanted militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an official said today.

Larry Margasak, Washington

Pentagon officials are investigating new allegations by a civil liberties group that military interrogators at the US prison at Guantanamo Bay questioned detainees under the guise of friendlier FBI agents.

Fuelled by fierce fighting in Fallujah and rebel counterattacks elsewhere in Iraq, the US military death toll for November is approaching the highest for any month of the war so far.

SEVERAL prisoners freed from Guantanamo Bay after being deemed to pose no threat are claimed to have returned to terrorism - at times with deadly consequences.

The US Army is probing the deaths of at least 32 Iraqis and five Afghans held by American forces since August 2002, the Pentagon has confirmed.

US military units holding and interrogating prisoners in Iraq did not get a specific list of techniques permitted during questioning and were expected to follow the Geneva Conventions, a senior Pentagon official said.

Abul Abbas, the Palestinian mastermind of the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro passenger ship in which an American tourist was killed, has died in US custody in Iraq.

An American freelance journalist has been ordered out of Iraq by the Pentagon for revealing the location of a Marine unit during a television interview.

The first prisoners of war captured in southern Iraq were searched and herded into temporary barbed wire enclosures.

'Coalition' forces stood poised to strike at Saddam Hussein’s regime today as they moved up to the Iraqi border.