DAMASCUS – A score of young Iraqi women in tight, shimmering gowns shuffle across the nightclub dance floor under the hungry eyes of Gulf Arabs at nearby tables.

ANKARA – Turkish police have foiled a plot to murder a priest, in a case that recalls other attacks this year against Christians in Muslim but secular Turkey, newspapers reported on Monday.

BAGHDAD – A suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest killed four Iraqi neighborhood patrol volunteers at a checkpoint on Baghdad’s northern outskirts on Monday, police said.

JERUSALEM – The number of people killed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dropped sharply in 2007, but human rights abuses in the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank increased, an Israeli human rights watchdog said on Monday.

NEW DELHI – India has ended its high alert for forces along the Pakistan border and restored some transport links, officials said on Monday, following disruption in the wake of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination.

LONDON – Pakistan’s political leaders must strive for democracy, which would stand as a lasting memorial to assassinated opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Monday.

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency) After a wave of freezing cold weather covered a majority of Iranian city, Turkmenistan misused the opportunity and halted gas supplies to Iran to double the price of exports to the Islamic Republic, an informed source in the Oil Ministry said here on Monday.

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency) Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a message to Umar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, extended his congratulations to the Sudanese president, government and nation on the country’s national day.

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency) Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei urged Iranians to be alert against enemy plots ahead of legislative elections next March.

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency) Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad extended his congratulations to the Cuban government and nation on the country’s national day.