Leaders from the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas arrived in Egypt yesterday to discuss progress in Cairo's efforts to arrange a truce with Israel, Egyptian and Hamas sources said.
Hamas officials said earlier that Hamas had no objections to a ceasefire lasting 18 months but a lifting of the blockade of the Gaza Strip must be part of the deal. A previous ceasefire between Israel and Hamas collapsed in December, leading to a three-week Israeli offensive on the coastal enclave in which at least 1,300 Palestinians were killed before both sides separately halted hostilities.
Hamas regards the blockade as illegal collective punishment on Gaza's 1.5 million Palestinian population and cited it as a reason for not renewing the previous truce.
Exotic animals trapped in Mexican drug trade
From the live snakes that smugglers stuff with packets of cocaine to the white tigers drug lords keep as exotic pets, rare animals are being increasingly sucked into Mexico's deadly narcotics trade. Drug gang leaders like to show off rarities like sea turtle skin boots and build ostentatious private zoos at their mansions.
They also reap additional profits by sharing routes with animal traffickers who cram humming birds into cigarette packs and baby monkeys into car air conditioning ducts to be sold to underground pet traders in the United States.
Mexico's raging drug war killed some 5,700 people last year and some cartel leaders have even been rumoured to throw rivals to their big cats as food.
The big profits available from selling wildlife on the black market are added incentive to Mexican gangs moving other contraband.
North Korea open to disarmament talks
North Korea wants to advance nuclear disarmament steps if its aid demands are met and it played down concerns over possible missile launches, a former senior US diplomat said yesterday on his return from the country's capital.
Pyongyang, which may be moving to test-fire its longest range missile in a bid to grab the attention of new US President Barack Obama, said it had the right to make such a launch.
The North Korean officials told the former US ambassador to South Korea, that their country wants progress in the six-party nuclear disarmament talks, which have faltered in dispute over the North's obligations and its demands for more heavy fuel oil shipments.
North Korea held its first nuclear test explosion in 2006, alarming regional powers and galvanising six-party talks aimed at ending its atomic weapons ambitions.
Pope to address Jews after bishop denies Holocaust
Israel's chief Rabbinate is resuming dialogue with the Vatican after freezing ties over a Holocaust-denying bishop and the pope will meet major Jewish groups to try to make amends, a Church source said yesterday.
The Rabbinate pulled out of a meeting with Vatican officials scheduled for March 1-4 in the middle of an international outcry over Pope Benedict's lifting of the excommunications of four traditionalist bishops, including Richard Williamson, who denies the full extent of the Holocaust.
The meeting will now take place in late February or mid-March and will most likely include a papal audience.
Ecuador's president expells US official
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa has ordered the expulsion of a US Embassy official yesterday, accusing him of having tried to put conditions on economic aid destined for a social welfare project.
"We're not going to let anyone treat us as if we were a colony here" Correa said, adding that the official would be given 48 hours to leave the Andean nation.
Vatican pressure to keep comatose woman alive
The Vatican and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi piled pressure on Italy's president to change his mind and order that a comatose woman be kept alive in a right-to-die case that has split the mainly Catholic country.
President Giorgio Napolitano has refused to sign a decree by Berlusconi's government which circumvented a high court ruling and ordered doctors to resume force-feeding the woman, who has been in a coma since a car crash in 1992.