Gaza Strip militants vowed today that an Israeli soldier kidnapped five years ago would not “see the light” until Palestinian prisoners held by Israel were released.

Syrian security forces detained dozens of opposition activists and others in raids today launched less than a week after President Bashar Assad’s regime abolished emergency laws used for decades to crush dissent, a human rights activist said.

Two ferries carrying foreigners trying to leave strife-torn Libya were waiting to leave Tripoli today, delayed by officialdom and rough seas, while a Russian-chartered ferry arrived at a port further east.

World leaders lack the political will to ensure that everyone infected with HIV and Aids gets treatment, the head of a meeting dedicated to the disease said.

South Korea accused North Korea today of firing a torpedo that sank a naval warship in March, killing 46 sailors in the country’s worst military disaster since the Korean War.

Drumbeats called the faithful to a Sunday Mass behind mounds of rubble and amid the few remaining walls of Port-au-Prince’s destroyed Roman Catholic cathedral to listen to a sermon in a scene resembling the Apocalypse.

Islamic insurgents posing as UN personnel detonated suicide car bombs in an African Union (AU) peacekeeping base in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the flogging of a woman in Pakistan was “unacceptable” and the chief justice had taken the right decision to launch an investigation.

Hamas declared a ceasefire with Israel in Gaza in the name of all Palestinian factions today, in a televised announcement by its Damascus-based deputy leader.

Israel said it was approaching the “endgame” of its three-week offensive against Gaza’s Hamas rulers and scheduled a Security Cabinet vote today on a truce proposed by Egypt.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on the international community to find a solution to the global food crisis, saying sharply rising prices could pose a threat to the stability of developing nations, particularly in Africa.

Iraq’s Sunni deputy prime minister was wounded today in a suicide bombing near the heavily fortified Green Zone that killed as many as six, authorities said.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is travelling to Baghdad today for a meeting with the Iraqi prime minister, the first visit by the top United Nations official in nearly 18 months.