RAMALLAH — For most Palestinians, black-hooded gunmen have long been respected symbols of resistance against Israeli occupation.

BEIJING (Reuters) — China hit back at critics of its policy on Sudan on Thursday, saying forcing UN troops on Khartoum would complicate efforts to resolve the Darfur crisis and calling attempts to link its policies there with the Olympics “ridiculous”.

ANKARA (AP) — Turkey has declared several areas near the border with Iraq to be “temporary security zones” in a sign of increasing activity by the military in its campaign against Kurdish rebels.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AP) — The “Quartet” of international Mideast mediators stepped into the void, signalling it would invite Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for talks in Cairo, after a summit was called off at the last minute.

HEILIGENDAMM, Germany (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin, bitterly opposed to a US missile shield in eastern Europe, told US President George W. Bush on Thursday that Moscow would drop its objections if the system were installed in Azerbaijan.

A BOMB WENT off near a Christian town north of Beirut on Thursday, in the latest string of explosions that have shaken Lebanon since fighting erupted between army troops and Islamists in a northern refugee camp three weeks ago.

Russia’s Putin has suggested a rogue proposal to United States of America to share a Russian-controlled radar as part of an anti-missile shield that would try to protect all of Europe.

The general picked by the US president to turn things around in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has admitted that he had misgivings about the so-called surge in Iraq and that results so far have been “mixed”.

In occupied Kashmir, the Chairman of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq has reiterated Kashmiris’ pledge to take their struggle to its logical end. 

Sikasso-African peasants at the forum held to counter the G8 summit criticised the subsidies enjoyed by the rich nations’ producers, which they said were squeezing them further into poverty.