• Eritrea dismissed as baseless fabrication accusations by an Ethiopian official that Eritrean forces kidnapped a group of tourists, including Britons and Ethiopians, in a remote part of Ethiopia. The Britons, believed to include diplomats from the British embassy in Addis Ababa, went missing last week in the remote and inhospitable Afar area in the northeast of the country.

• More than 1,000 US and Iraqi troops began major operations in a Shi'ite militia bastion in Baghdad, meeting little resistance as they searched homes for illegal weapons and carried out patrols. The operations in Sadr City, stronghold of the Mehdi Army of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, could test Iraqi and US determination to enforce a new security plan seen as a final attempt to stop Iraq sliding into all-out sectarian civil war.

• Egypt summoned Israel's envoy to Cairo after Israeli media allegations that the Israeli army might have killed 250 captured Egyptian soldiers at the end of the 1967 Middle East war. Two ruling party lawmakers demanded the ambassador's expulsion, calling him a dog and an apostate. Another called in a special parliamentary session for a declaration of war on the Jewish state.

• North Korea is fully prepared to shut down its nuclear facilities and allow inspections, a South Korean official said in New York, where envoys from Pyongyang and Washington are set to begin rare talks on improving ties. North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan has been on a visit to the US since Thursday, becoming the highest-ranking official to do so since 2000.