World Highlights

¤ Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, struggling to quell international concern about a new government under Islamic militant group Hamas, yesterday assumed security control over the Gaza Strip's border crossings. Hamas, which ousted Mr Abbas's long-dominant Fatah faction in January elections on a platform of fighting corruption and Israel, decried the move as a violation of power-sharing agreements. See also page 19

¤ Pakistani security forces, backed by helicopter gunships, killed 16 pro-Taliban militants in fierce clashes in a troubled tribal region near the border with Afghanistan, a military spokesman said yesterday. The clashes erupted in the Shawal area of North Waziristan after an overnight attack by militants on a paramilitary post during which four soldiers were killed.

¤ Venezuelan police have found the bodies of three young brothers kidnapped more than a month ago driving to school in a case that has outraged many Venezuelans worried about violent crime. John Bryan, Kevin and Jason Faddoul, aged 17, 13 and 12, were found in scrubland outside Caracas on Tuesday, shot in their heads and necks with shotguns. The victims, who held Venezuelan and Canadian citizenship, were huddled together, still wearing their beige school uniforms, alongside the body of their driver.

¤ A German hotelier kidnapped by suspected leftist rebels in Colombia has been freed after five years in captivity and is in safe custody in Bogota, a foreign ministry spokesman in Berlin said yesterday. Lothar Hintze, who was born in 1945, was seized in March 2001 by suspected members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in the central Colombian province of Tolima and taken from his lakeside hotel in a boat.

¤ A former police officer won Tuesday's local by-election in Kuwait, dashing the hopes of women who voted and ran for office for the first time in the Gulf Arab state. Official results released yesterday showed ex-lieutenant colonel Yousef al-Suwaileh got the final seat in the Municipal Council, beating seven other candidates including two women.

¤ A bomb ripped through offices of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) on the outskirts of Istanbul yesterday, injuring two people, a local party official said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the explosion happened against the background of a week of street clashes between police and Kurdish protesters in which 16 people have died.

¤ Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged the US Congress yesterday to back a controversial nuclear energy deal with India, arguing it would reduce New Delhi's dependence on Iranian oil and create thousands of new American jobs.