oIraq's ruling Shi'ite Islamist parties struck a last-minute deal to patch up differences yesterday and agreed to register as a united bloc for December 15 polls where they face a new Sunni Arab alliance. But in a flare-up likely to fuel mistrust between Iraq's two main religious sects, at least 21 Shi'ite militia fighters and two policemen were killed when they clashed with Sunni insurgents near Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said. Another five policemen and 12 members of the Mehdi Army loyal to nationalist Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr were wounded in the battle, which erupted after they tried to rescue a Mehdi Army member who was being held hostage, the official said.
o About 50 people were feared dead in the Philippines when a tunnel in a gold mine collapsed after a blast, police said yesterday. Police said they had pulled out five dead bodies after the accident in the Mount Diwalwal region on the southern Mindanao island late on Wednesday, adding that 11 people were injured.
o Heavy rain and storms paralysed life in southern India yesterday, flooding roads, snapping power and phone lines and disrupting flights as the death toll due to the bad weather this month crossed 100. Tamil Nadu state was the worst hit by the latest downpour as many areas in the capital Chennai were inundated and cut off, while people and vehicles waded through waist-high water in some parts of the city, witnesses said.
o Tropical Storm Beta bore down on Caribbean islands off Nicaragua's jungle-clad coastline yesterday and was forecast to bring heavy rains and flooding as it strengthens into a hurricane. Colombia's government issued a hurricane warning for its San Andres and Providencia islands near Nicaragua, once favoured hideaways of British pirate Henry Morgan and expected to be the first places hit by the storm.
o European Union leaders demanded yesterday that Syria cooperate fully with a United Nations investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.
In a statement issued at a one-day EU summit, the 25 leaders described the findings of German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis's probe into the February 14 car bombing as "very serious".
o Pope Benedict assured the world's Jews yesterday that he and the Vatican were irrevocably committed to good Catholic-Jewish relations and would never forget the Holocaust. The Pope sent a message to a conference in Rome to mark the 40th anniversary celebrations of a Second Vatican Council document called Nostra Aetate (In Our Time) that revolutionised relations by repudiating the concept of continuing collective Jewish guilt for the death of Christ.