YEMENI President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s 32-year rule seems near collapse. His exit would spell uncertainty for his broken country and discomfiture for US and Saudi friends, still backing their “ally” against al-Qaida.

A Hamburg court today acquitted a Moroccan man of helping the September 11 hijackers after rejecting a dramatic last-minute motion for new evidence by a lawyer for relatives of US victims of the attacks.

A YEMENI shot dead an American and a Canadian working at a US oil firm in the Arab state yesterday and then killed himself, a Yemeni official said.

A YEMENI shot dead three American doctors and critically wounded a US pharmacist yesterday at a missionary hospital in the south of the impoverished country.