Iran has hanged four convicted murderers in public in the southern province of Bushehr, an Iranian daily reported yesterday.

Kargozaran newspaper said the four, including an Afghan national, were executed in a square in Borazjan city after being convicted of murdering several people.

Iran's judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi in January ordered a halt to public executions in the Islamic Republic unless they had his approval, "based on social necessities". Executions are usually carried out in prisons.

Murder, adultery, rape, armed robbery, apostasy and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under Iran's Sharia law, enforced since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution.

Amnesty International in April listed Iran as the world's second most prolific executioner last year, with at least 317 people put to death, trailing only China which carried out 470 death sentences.

Iran rejects accusations it is violating human rights and accuses the West of double standards and hypocrisy.

Former White House press secretary dies

President George W. Bush's former press secretary Tony Snow has died of cancer, the White House confirmed yesterday.

Snow, 53, who had been a conservative radio and television commentator, resigned in August 2007 as Bush's spokesman after taking the job the previous year.

Bush in a statement said he and his wife Laura "are deeply saddened by the death of our dear friend," and called Snow "one of our nation's finest writers and commentators" who "earned a loyal following with incisive radio and television broadcasts."

Snow learnt in March last year that the cancer he had fought earlier had returned, and subsequently underwent chemotherapy. He said his decision to quit his post was for financial, not health, reasons. He had earned far more as a commentator than his White House salary.

Snow and his wife Jill had three children.

Clashes in Northern Ireland injure 19

Nineteen people were injured in overnight clashes between rioters and police in Northern Ireland, police said yesterday, ahead of a day of Protestant parades to mark a 1690 victory over Catholics.

A police spokeswoman said 14 police officers were wounded when demonstrators in Portadown and Belfast used paint, petrol bombs and stones to attack the police. Four of the policemen needed hospital treatment.

"There were three separate incidents," she said.

It was not immediately clear who started the riots, but an Irish broadcaster said some were inspired by Irish nationalists opposed to Protestant marches through Catholic neighbourhoods.

At least five civilians were also treated in hospital after clashes in the Broadway area of west Belfast.

Old City shooting wounds Israeli police

An attacker shot and wounded two Israeli policemen guarding one of the ancient gates of Jerusalem overnight, just metres from the mosque compound that lies at the heart of rival Jewish and Muslim claims to the city.

Police were treating the incident, which left one officer in a serious condition with a gunshot wound to the head, as a 'terror' attack although yesterday they were still hunting the assailant, who fired from a Muslim cemetery under the city wall.

The attack came just over a week after a Palestinian killed three Israeli motorists during a bulldozer rampage on one of Jewish West Jerusalem's busiest streets, adding to tensions with residents of occupied Arab East Jerusalem who have free access to Israel, unlike Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Headless Hitler assailant to escape fine

A former Berlin police officer who tore off the head of an Adolf Hitler waxwork at a new museum in the German capital will probably not have to pay for damages because he is destitute, a magazine reported yesterday.

The 41-year-old scuffled with guards and leapt over a rope barrier before tearing off Hitler's head just minutes after Berlin's new Madame Tussauds opened a couple of weeks ago. The headless Hitler waxwork worth €200,000 was removed for repairs.

Pamplona Bulls gore runners, dozens injured

A man was gored in the thigh and four other people suffered cuts and fractured bones on the sixth day of the annual Spanish bull-running in the Spanish town of Pamplona, organisers said.

They said a 26-year-old Colombian man was gored in his left thigh and was taken to a hospital in the northern Spanish city. Doctors declined to comment on his condition. The other four were treated for injuries including a broken jaw and fractures.

An estimated 8,000 took part in the early morning run, fleeing bulls weighing up to 700 kg through the narrow cobbled streets of Pamplona.

Dozens of people have been injured so far in the week-long festival, made famous by Ernest Hemingway's novel The Sun also Rises.