World Highlights

¤ Palestinian gunmen from President Mahmoud Abbas's ruling Fatah party stormed election offices and battled police in the Gaza Strip yesterday in a flare-up of violence that could disrupt next month's parliamentary ballot. The violence prompted the Central Elections Committee to close all its offices in the West Bank and Gaza. Employees would not return to work until the Interior Ministry provided them with security, the Palestinian official news agency reported.

¤ A Transavia flight with 62 people on board was forced to land in Bordeaux, France, yesterday after receiving a bomb threat on its way from Malaga in Spain to Rotterdam, the airline said. Transavia, a unit of Dutch airline KLM, said an anonymous caller telephoned an airline call centre in Spain 20 minutes after the Boeing 737-700 took off from Malaga to warn that a bomb was on the aircraft.

¤ Syria needs to speed up cooperation with a UN commission investigating the death of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri or the inquiry could take years, the chief prosecutor said yesterday. Detlev Mehlis, who has headed the UN probe into Mr Hariri's assassination, told the Security Council that cooperation with Damascus had improved but he was not sure this would continue.

¤ Former US President Gerald Ford, 92, was in a California hospital for tests yesterday but his office said the admission was routine and indicated his stay would be brief. Mr Ford suffered a mild stroke in August 2000 and was hospitalised briefly in 2003 after suffering dizzy spells while playing golf in the desert heat near Palm Springs.

¤ Gianpiero Fiorani, the banker whose close relationship with Bank of Italy Governor Antonio Fazio prompted calls for the central banker's resignation in a takeover battle this year, was arrested yesterday, legal sources said. The sources said Mr Fiorani, the former chief executive of Banca Popolare Italiana, was arrested on suspicion of criminal association.

¤ More than 450 police, four times the usual number, patrolled Sydney's streets yesterday to prevent a third night of racial violence by youth gangs who have attacked people, smashed cars and hurled rocks at police. As rain fell on Sydney yesterday night, there were no reports of trouble as police checked cars at road blocks in suburbs scarred by racial violence in the previous two nights.

¤ A UN court yesterday found a former Rwandan colonel guilty of genocide and sentenced him to 25 years in jail, a spokesman for the tribunal said. Aloys Simba, 67, was convicted of genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity.

¤ Italian police yesterday busted an Italian-Albanian crime ring and arrested 80 people linked to drug and arms trafficking and prostitution. Police said the five-year-long investigation had uncovered an international network spanning Italy, Albania and Germany.