OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — By wasting little time withdrawing troops from northern Gaza over the weekend after a two-day operation, Israel made clear it did not want to get bogged down in territory it quit less than a year ago.

DAMASCUS (AP) — Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in the Syrian capital Monday in a government-sanctioned protest to support Palestinians in the Gaza Strip under attack following last month’s capture of an Israeli soldier.

BEIRUT — Rarely have Western news organisations wooed Arab hearts and minds so avidly — or with so little certainty of political or commercial reward.

KUWAIT CITY (AFP) — Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah approved Monday a new 16-member Cabinet that remains dominated by the ruling family despite the opposition’s victory in June elections.

BAGHDAD — While condemning in public the sectarian death squads that gunned down 40 people on Sunday in a Sunni part of Baghdad, some Iraqi Shiite leaders say in private retaliation for Sunni insurgent bomb attacks is understandable.

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union hopes for a substantive response from Iranian nuclear negotiators on Tuesday regarding a package of incentives offered to Tehran as a way of ending the standoff caused by its nuclear programme, an official said.

OCCUPIED  JERUSALEM (AP) — The two most powerful players in the violent standoff over the capture of an Israeli soldier offered up sharply differing visions Monday on how to resolve it.

Vice-president of CRI, the Military Amir Abdallah Shamil Abu-Idris (AKA Shamil Basayev) has officially thanked the Iraqi Mujahideen for elimination of a group of Russian diplomats the spies in Bagdad, the Kavkaz Center has learned. In the telegram for mass media, Basayev specifies:

SANAA (AP) — Nineteen alleged Al Qaeda members accused of plotting to assassinate Westerners and blow up a hotel used by Americans were acquitted by a judge who also exonerated some of fighting US troops in Iraq.

CAIRO (AFP) — Hundreds of journalists demonstrated Sunday outside the Egyptian parliament where a draft bill allowing jail sentences for journalists and preventing them from investigating fraud was being debated.