World highlights

• In a challenge to Syria, the UN Security Council yesterday voted to set up a court to prosecute the murder two years ago of former Lebanese PM Rafik al-Hariri. After months of arguments between deeply divided Lebanese politicians and talks between the Beirut government and the UN, 10 council members supported a Western-sponsored resolution to set up the court and five abstained. There were no votes against.

• Russia and the US clashed over Kosovo and US missile shield plans yesterday, souring a meeting aimed at preparing the ground for next week's Group of Eight summit on the Baltic coast.

• Four American hostages taken from Nigeria's oil-producing Niger Delta region were released after three weeks in captivity, authorities said. The four men were taken by gunmen from a barge working for US oil company Chevron off the coast of Nigeria on May 9.

• Turkey sent more tanks to its border with Iraq yesterday in a military build-up that is fuelling US concern about a possible incursion into northern Iraq against Kurdish rebels.

• Israel killed two Hamas militants in an air strike in the Gaza Strip yesterday and announced it was not considering a ceasefire with the Islamist group despite appeals by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

• Britain "fully supports" US efforts to toughen UN Security Council sanctions against Sudan because of the situation in Darfur, a British official travelling with Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday.

• China and the US are confident North Korea remains committed to a disarmament agreement but the issue of North Korean funds languishing in a Macau bank needs to be resolved, a US envoy said yesterday.

• The American Civil Liberties Union is suing a unit of Boeing Co., charging that it assisted the US Central Intelligence Agency in abducting suspect foreigners to overseas prisons where it says they were held and tortured.