World highlights

• The US war crimes tribunals at Guantanamo came to a screeching halt yesterday when a military judge dropped all the charges against a young Canadian in a ruling that could preclude trying any of the 380 prisoners. Army Col Peter Brownback, the judge, said the military tribunal lacked jurisdiction over Canadian Omar Khadr because he did not meet the definition of those subject to trial under a law the US Congress drafted last year.

• Two suspects in a foiled plot to blow up New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport appeared in court in Trinidad and Tobago and were accused of conspiring to commit terrorism. Abdul Kadir, a citizen of Guyana and former member of its parliament, and Kareem Ibrahim, a citizen of Trinidad and Tobago, are among four suspects in the case, which has brought attention to a sun-drenched Caribbean region previously not associated with Islamic radicalism.

• Islamist gunmen killed two Lebanese soldiers at a Palestinian refugee camp in south Lebanon, the first fatal spillover from fighting between the army and al Qaeda-inspired fighters in the north. Two militants of the Jund al-Sham group were also killed in the clash on the edge of the big Ain al-Hilweh camp near the southern port city of Sidon, security and military sources said.

• An Israeli general ordered two jailed Hamas cabinet ministers and a legislator from the Islamist group held without trial for six months, one of their lawyers said. Minister of State Wasfi Kabha, Education Minister Naser al-Deen al-Shaer and Abdel-Rahman Zeidan, a Hamas lawmaker, were detained by Israel, with more than 30 other Palestinian officials, in the occupied West Bank last month.

• More murders and robberies last year sent US violent crimes higher for the second straight year, the FBI said, with the increase blamed on gangs, youth violence, gun crimes and fewer police on beats. The FBI reported that the number of violent crimes nationwide went up by 1.3 per cent last year, following a 2.3 per cent increase in 2005. That had been the first rise in four years and the biggest percentage gain in 15 years.