World Highlights

¤ Hamas extended big local election gains from the fractured ruling Fatah party, buoying the Islamic militant group ahead of a Palestinian parliamentary election next month. Israel said that if Hamas achieved political dominance it would spell an end to all hopes for peace talks because the group is sworn to destroying the Jewish state.

¤ A bipartisan group of US senators, demanding increased protection of civil liberties, defied President George W. Bush and blocked legislation to renew the USA Patriot Act, a centerpiece of his war on terrorism. On a Senate vote of 52-47, mostly Republican backers of the measure fell eight short of the needed 60 to end debate and move to passage of it.

¤ The Bush administration said that everything it has done to protect the public is within the law, responding to a report that President George W. Bush authorised an intelligence agency to eavesdrop on people in the United States to track potential terrorist activities. The New York Times said Bush signed a secret presidential order after the September 11, 2001, attacks, which allowed the National Security Agency to track the international telephone calls and emails of hundreds of people without the court approval normally required for domestic spying.

¤ New York transit workers launched a strike against two bus lines and threatened to expand it into a mass walkout that could strand millions of commuters and jam the streets of the largest US city. The strike was initially against only two private bus lines in the borough of Queens. The Transport Workers Union did not specify when or if the action might be expanded to affect the vital subway system or city buses.

¤ The trial of Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk was adjourned in a case that has raised concerns over restrictions on freedom of expression in the European Union candidate state. Mr Pamuk faces a possible three-year jail term for "insulting Turkish identity" by saying no one dared discuss the massacre of a million Armenians 90 years ago and the killings of 30,000 Kurds in recent decades in a case that has divided Turkey.

¤ An explosion, caused by an accident, shook a historic district of Istanbul yesterday, injuring four people, police said. "We know it is not a bomb," a police officer in Istanbul's Eyup district said. The blast occured in a heating furnace in an office and shop complex near the Golden Horn.

Last month one man was killed and 11 people were injured when a bomb exploded near a theme park in Istanbul, the country's business capital.