Egyptian police shot and killed two African migrants, including a seven-year-old Sudanese girl, as they tried to cross the border into Israel yesterday, security and hospital sources said.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the security sources said an Egyptian patrol opened fire on the migrants to stop them getting across the border south of the Rafah crossing.
They added that seven other African migrants had been detained, including the dead child's mother.
Their deaths bring to 16 the number of migrants killed at the border this year.
Hospital sources said the other victim was an unidentified African in his thirties, killed by a gunshot wound to his back.
Iraq police find seven bodies
Police raiding a suspected Al-Qaeda hide-out found a secret prison and the bodies of seven Iraqis bearing gunshot wounds and torture marks, Iraqi police said yesterday.
Police said they believed the six men and one woman, only two of whom have so far been identified, had been kidnapped. There was no immediate comment from the US military.
Police arrested 11 suspected Al-Qaeda members in the raid on a house in Benat al-Hassan, on the outskirts of Samarra, early yesterday, said Captain Muthana Shakir, commander of Iraq's Rapid Intervention Force in Samarra, 100 km north of Baghdad.
They found a room sealed by a door with bars in it, marked 'Sijin' - Arabic for prison - and the tortured body of the woman, who had been shot, lay inside.
Search for missing UK churchman
Slovenian police are searching for a Welsh church minister who went missing on a walking holiday, Britain's Foreign Office said yesterday.
The 52-year-old Reverend David Fox, from the Penarth United Church near Cardiff, went missing last Monday in the Bohinj area of Slovenia, north-west of the capital Ljubljana.
The Alpine Rescue Service are also involved in the search.
Scottish Labour leader quits
A close ally of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Labour's leader in the Scottish parliament quit yesterday over a funding scandal, in another blow for a party falling increasingly out of favour with voters.
A Scottish parliamentary group recommended this week that Wendy Alexander, sister of Britain's minister for international development Douglas Alexander, should be banned from Scotland's parliament for one day for breaching donation rules.
Alexander, who has only been in the job since September, had failed to declare donations to her leadership campaign.
Cargo ship sinks off China coast
A Chinese cargo ship carrying iron ore capsized off its east coast before dawn yesterday, killing five sailors and leaving five missing, the Xinhua news agency said.
Haoping had 14 sailors on board and carried 4,000 tonnes of iron ore. Ships in the area and a helicopter saved four of the sailors.
China's steel industry is increasingly hungry for iron ore, as steel production is expected to hit well over 500 million tonnes this year.
Six killed in clashes in Chechnya
Four policemen and two rebels were killed in clashes in Russia's southern Chechnya region, Interfax news agency quoted the local Interior Ministry as saying yesterday.
Interfax quoted a statement from the ministry as saying clashes between a police unit and rebels took place in the mountains of the Vedeno region. The ministry said police reinforcements arrived at the scene.
Sumo star, singer enliven election
What do a sumo wrestling star and the owner of an Irish pub have in common? Both are running for parliament in Mongolia's general election today, adding zest to the country's lively young democracy.
Davaa Batbayar, 35, has been back home only a year since his sumo career in Japan, but is confident his wrestling reputation will help him at the ballot box.
For Gankhuu, 41, who owns the Grand Khaan pub, a popular Ulan Bator nightspot, his side job as the frontman for 'Beer', a local cover band is in itself political.