OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel said it would free $100 million in frozen tax funds later Thursday to boost moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas — the first Israeli payment since Hamas won legislative elections and took office last year.

MOGADISHU (Reuters) — The top UN envoy to Somalia, making his first visit since a war last month, said on Thursday the Horn of Africa nation now had its best chance to end 16 years of anarchy and bloodshed.

NAIROBI — A US air strike on Somalia this month sparked widespread condemnation and predictions it would both worsen violence inside the country and hurt US interests across east Africa.

PARIS (AP) — The head of the UN nuclear watchdog agency said Thursday he was concerned that the UN sanctions on Iran could escalate the standoff with the US and its European allies.

CAIRO (AP) — Arab leaders were deeply skeptical of the US plan for Iraq, a day after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tried to sell it to them. Kuwait’s emir told Rice that America should work with Iran and Syria, officials said — something US President George W. Bush has …

RABAT (Reuters) — A Moroccan man returned home to find his 11-year-old son hanging dead from the ceiling, a newspaper said on Thursday, the latest victim of a macabre game in which children mimic the death of Saddam Hussein.

ANKARA — From Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan down, Turkey’s politicians are threatening military intervention in northern Iraq to crush Turkish Kurdish rebels hiding there if, as seems sure, US forces fail to tackle them.

REVIEW TOPICS: Russian Federal Security Service chief issues high security alert over terrorist threat Russia’s security services order to suspend cellular phone services to reduce risk of terrorism act Russian security experts consider warning on terrorism acts a provocation FBI does not comment on ways Russian secret services obtained information …

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Larijani said that the United States and Britain are seeking to forge an imaginary enemy in order to justify their presence in the region.

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki stressed that Tehran views the Iraqi government as responsible for the immediate release of the Iranian diplomats kidnapped during an earlier raid by the US troops in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil.