Hamas said on Tuesday it still hoped Washington would soften its position toward a Palestinian unity government despite Israeli statements that the United States and Israel would shun it until it met several conditions.

Six former officials in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq regime today denied crimes against humanity for a crackdown on Kurds in the 1980s.

The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, today rejected international demands for his country to suspend its uranium enrichment programme as a UN deadline to do so approached.