World Highlights

¤ A security scare swept Malaysia's diplomatic community yesterday after seven embassies received suspicious packages, shutting the Japanese mission, police and diplomats said. Tokyo evacuated its embassy staff after receiving a slim package containing an oily liquid and a compact disc, similar to packages found yesterday by the Canadian, Italian, German, Singaporean, Philippine and Thai embassies, police said.

¤ Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian woman who stabbed a soldier at a West Bank checkpoint yesterday and a militant group said she had been on her way to carry out a suicide attack in Israel.

¤ Gunmen shot dead a UN security officer outside his home in southern Somalia in the latest assassination linked to foreign targets in the anarchic Horn of Africa nation, the world body said yesterday. "He had just been dropped off by his driver when he was shot and killed by two people," Sandra Macharia, spokesman for the UN Development Programme's Somalia operation, said.

¤ A Pakistani military court yesterday sentenced four men to death and two others to life in jail for involvement in an al Qaeda-inspired assassination attempt on President Pervez Musharraf in 2003. Mr Musharraf, a key ally in the US-led war on terrorism, narrowly escaped an attempt on December 14, 2003, to kill him when a bomb blew up a bridge in the garrison city of Rawalpindi.

¤ Hurricane Stan smacked into Mexico's Gulf coast yesterday, knocking down trees and closing ports after unleashing floods, mudslides and high waves that killed at least 59 people in Central America. The hurricane, a mild Category One on the Saffir-Simpson scale, came ashore 136 km southeast of the city of Veracruz with winds of nearly 128 kph.