MORE than 100 people have died in an iron-fisted security crackdown in unrest-swept eastern Libya, Human Rights Watch said, fearing a “catastrophe” as protests spread closer to the capital.

POPE Benedict XVI decried the worsening plight of the world’s one billion hungry yesterday as a United Nations food summit rallied around a strategy of more help to farmers in poor nations but rebuffed a UN appeal to commit billions to the plan.

THE head of Scotland’s government has said that FBI director Robert Mueller was wrong to criticise the decision to free the Pan Am Flight 103 bomber – insisting there was public support for the release on compassionate grounds.

WITH Israeli troops now in control of many of the open areas used by militants to launch rockets, gunman have continued shooting from inside populated neighbourhoods.

Italy agreed today to pay Libya $5bn as compensation for its 30-year occupation of the country, which ended in 1943.

A son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is behind a group of foreign and Iraqi fighters responsible for this week’s devastating explosion in northern Iraq, a security chief for Sunni tribesmen who rose up against al-Qaida said today.

Sudan’s government committed to a ceasefire in Darfur at the start of peace talks, but many rebels boycotted the UN-sponsored negotiations.

Negotiators moved to lower expectations ahead of the opening of the Darfur peace talks today, with almost none of the key rebel leaders present to negotiate an agreement with the Sudanese government.

Sudan will announce a ceasefire at the start of peace talks with rebels on Saturday aimed at ending the four and a half year conflict in Darfur, Sudan's UN ambassador said.

Moammar Gadhafi’s long-isolated country has signed contracts worth £200m (€297m) with French companies for missiles and communications equipment, a Libyan official said today.

THE families of the children infected with the Aids virus in a Libyan hospital voiced outrage yesterday at the pardon and release of six medics who were flown to Bulgaria a day earlier.

A FORMER Libyan intelligence agent may have been wrongly convicted of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, a judicial panel said yesterday, recommending that he be granted a new appeal.

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi urged African, Arab and Western diplomats in his country for a two-day conference on Sudan’s troubled Darfur region to work with Sudanese rebels to find an immediate solution to the crisis.

The United States has decided to restore normal diplomatic relations with Libya after more than 25 years.

FIVE Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor at the centre of intense international negotiations won a reprieve when Libya's highest court overturned their death sentences on charges they deliberately infected children with AIDS.

A French court convicted the youngest son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi for striking his pregnant companion in a Paris hotel, handing him a fourth-month suspended prison sentence and a €500 fine, a judicial official said today.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell joins senior officials from the Group of Eight nations in Rabat tomorrow for a meeting with representatives of 23 countries across North Africa and the Middle East to discuss reforms in the Arab world.

Israel has completed preparations for the ailing Yasser Arafat to be buried in the Gaza Strip, outlining plans to allow West Bank Palestinians to cross through Israel for the funeral and permitting enemy Arab leaders to attend, security officials said today.

JOERG HAIDER’S political star appeared on the rise yesterday, with preliminary results showing Europe's most popular rightist holding on to a political post he needs to reclaim national prominence for his party.

The UN Security Council will vote on Tuesday on a British proposal to lift sanctions against Libya, though France and Tripoli are still deadlocked on how much to pay the families of 170 people killed in an 1989 airliner bombing, diplomats said.

Families of victims of the 1989 bombing of a French airliner returned from Libya saying that negotiations had failed to win a compensation package on par with the €2.5bn Lockerbie settlement.

UN diplomats said they would give France more time to reach agreement on its demands for new compensation from Libya for a 1989 bombing of a French airliner before voting to lift sanctions against the North African country. But they stressed that France needs to move quickly.

UN diplomats said they would give France more time to reach agreement on its demands for new compensation from Libya for a 1989 bombing of a French airliner before voting to lift sanctions against the North African country. But they stressed that France needs to move quickly.

HE won big in last month’s elections on an anti-American ticket, has called Osama bin Laden a holy warrior and counts Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar among his friends — and he could be Pakistan's next prime minister.