Europe’s new envoy to Somalia praised the interim government on Monday for steps to reach out to political opponents ahead of a national reconciliation conference intended to end a bloody insurgency.

Most camera-clicking tourists in the Mediterranean this summer will go home, as usual, without one of the world’s most arresting images — Algiers and its bay.

Egypt’s president has denied that the son-in-law of the country’s late leader Gamal Abdel Nasser was a spy, the state-run news agency reported Monday, breaking the state’s silence soon after the man’s death.

Seven Spanish tourists and two Yemeni drivers were killed on Monday when a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into their convoy at an ancient temple in Yemen on Monday, officials said.

Palestinian groups worked on Monday to end the six-week-old battle in a besieged refugee camp of north Lebanon, as aid workers continued to seek access to trapped civilians.

The government of moderate Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad promised Monday to pay full salaries to tens of thousands of civil servants for at least six months, but also warned that employees cooperating with the Islamist Hamas will be cut from the payroll.

The US military on Monday accused Iran for the first time of a direct role in an attack killing American troops in Iraq, saying it helped direct a sophisticated raid in January in which five soldiers died.

Thousands of Palestinians left stranded on the Egyptian side of the border since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip will be allowed to cross through the Kerem Shalom crossing Tuesday and return to Gaza following an agreement between Israel and Egypt.

ROME (AFP) – A two-day global meet on the state of law in war-battered Afghanistan opened in Rome Monday and due to be addressed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, UN chief Ban Ki-moon and NATO head Jaap De Hoop Scheffer.

BUNYAT, Afghanistan – Fatama’s husband left home one night to smuggle drugs from their mud-thatch border village into Iran. The next morning, her brother-in-law gave her the news: Her husband had been killed.