Crowds are cheering and celebrating in the streets after Liberian authorities reopened a slum where tens of thousands of people were barricaded amid the country’s Ebola outbreak.

Two new cases of Ebola have emerged in Nigeria and are outside the group of medics who treated a man who arrived in the country sick and later died, Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said.

Syria has denied rebel claims they hit President Bashar Assad’s motorcade in a rocket and mortar attack in Damascus.

Damon Hill has called on FIA president Jean Todt to take an ethical stance with regard to the controversial Bahrain Grand Prix.

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is in a “stable situation” in a Cuban hospital receiving treatment due to a severe respiratory infection, his government said.

Two massive explosions rocked the heart of Damascus today, striking near the army and air force command headquarters and sending huge columns of thick black smoke over the Syrian capital.

Thousands of protesters angry at a US-made anti-Islam film clashed with police close to Islamabad’s diplomatic enclave in chaotic scenes that left at least 50 people injured.

Government warplanes bombed a town in northern Syria today, killing at least 18 people, activists said, while the new UN envoy to the country acknowledged that brokering an end to the nation’s civil war will be a “very, very difficult” task.

The bodies of more than 30 civilians, some of them women and children, were today found in the streets of the Syrian town of Daraya south-west of Damascus, activists said.

Syria’s prime minister completed his defection by crossing into Jordan at dawn today after two days of hiding inside his homeland, according to Jordanian officials and a spokesman for the rebel Free Syrian Army.

A bomb ripped through the third floor of the state TV building in Damascus today, damaging several offices and wounding at least three employees, Syrian TV said.

Gunmen have attacked the headquarters of a pro-government Syrian TV station killing seven employees and kidnapping others.

PAKISTAN’S Supreme Court ramped up pressure on the nation’s government yesterday, beginning contempt proceedings against the prime minister for failing to carry out its order to reopen a corruption case against the president.

Thousands of regime backers massed at a mosque in the Syrian capital today for funeral prayers for policemen killed in a Damascus bombing, as the government vowed to respond with an “iron fist” to security threats.

Muammar Gaddafi’s son and one-time heir apparent, Saif al-Islam, will be tried at home and will not be handed over to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Libya’s Information Minister said today.

Muammar Gaddafi was captured and possibly killed when revolutionary forces overwhelmed his home town, Sirte, transitional government officials said today.

Al-Qaida-linked militants have threatened more terror attacks that will “increase day by day” after a suicide bomber killed 72 people in Somalia.

The storming of the Israeli embassy in Cairo by a mob of Egyptian protesters inflicted a “severe injury to the fabric of peace” between the two countries, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned today.

A plane carrying 112 people has crashed while trying to land at Kisangani international airport in Democratic Republic of Congo.

Syrians ran for their lives today as elite army units swept through a northern province, expanding a deadly operation to crush signs of dissent against President Bashar Assad.

MUAMMAR GADDAFI struck at rebel control of a key Libyan coastal road for a second day but received a warning he would be held to account at The Hague for suspected crimes by his security forces.

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s army needs more international help to prevent brutal rebel attacks such as the recent mass gang-rape, a government spokesman said today.

Jamaica’s top policeman vowed today to capture the reputed underworld boss who escaped a bloody four-day assault on his slum stronghold amid growing claims that innocent people died during the fighting.

Jamaican security forces kicked down doors and arrested dozens of people in a bullet-strewn slum and said the death toll from four days of fighting sparked by the search for a reputed drug lord had risen to 73.

THE overall death toll from four days of violence in Jamaica’s capital rose to 49 yesterday after the country’s ombudsman said he had tallied the bodies of 44 civilians killed in a police assault on an alleged drug lord’s stronghold.

A Malawi gay couple have been convicted of having a criminal relationship and could face up to 14 years in jail under the country’s colonial-era laws.

Jamaica has legalised casinos after a nearly year-long debate which drew fierce opposition from religious groups.

Nigeria’s acting president dissolved the Cabinet today in his first major act since taking office more than a month ago.

Authorities arrested six suspected Taliban militants with a suicide vest and hand grenades allegedly on their way to attack a five-star hotel and kill Americans in Pakistan's cultural capital, said police.

Yemen today said it let the Christmas Day airline bomber into the country twice because no-one warned them he was a security threat.

AN American Airlines flight carrying 154 people skidded across a Jamaican runway in heavy rain, bouncing across the tarmac and injuring more than 40 people before it stopped just short of the Caribbean Sea, officials and witnesses said.

The Somali government blamed al-Qaida-linked Islamic militants for a suicide bombing that killed 22 people in the capital, as government officials buried three Cabinet ministers killed in the attack.

A SUSPECTED suicide bomber killed 41 people in an attack on the Pakistani military yesterday as the Taliban claimed responsibility for a weekend raid on the army’s headquarters.

An explosion that witnesses said was caused by a suicide bomber killed at least 20 people today in western Somalia, including the country’s national security minister, medical and government officials said.

INVESTIGATORS searched a wrecked luxury hotel in north-western Pakistan for evidence yesterday after a suicide bombing killed 11 people, including aid workers, in what the UN condemned as a “heinous terrorist attack”.

Investigators searched a wrecked luxury hotel in north-western Pakistan for evidence today after a bold suicide bombing killed 11 people, including aid workers, in what the UN condemned as a “heinous terrorist attack”.

A WOULD-BE hijacker surrendered to the authorities yesterday after releasing the last of more than 180 hostages he seized hours earlier aboard a Canadian charter jet in Montego Bay, Jamaica.

A gunman hijacked a plane on the tarmac near Montego Bay in Jamaica and took crew members hostage, airline officials said today.

Cheering activists and lawyers marched on the Pakistani capital today to protest outside parliament, defying a government ban and hundreds of arrests nationwide.

Pakistan understands it must take quick action against any terrorists connected to the Mumbai attacks that are living in the country, US Senator John McCain said today after meeting its leaders.

Pakistanis today protested over a suspected American missile strike that intelligence officials said killed a British citizen linked to a plot to blow up jetliners, saying their Western-allied government must stop the cross-border attacks.

Gunshots fired at a motorcade for Pakistan’s prime minister struck his vehicle today, but he was not in any of the cars during the apparent assassination attempt, a top government official said.

Pakistan’s prime minister survived an apparent assassination attempt today when at least two shots hit his limousine as he drove toward Islamabad.

Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf’s spokesman says he will not resign despite the move by Pakistan’s ruling coalition to finalise impeachment charges against him over the weekend.