The British ambassador to Moscow today denounced Russia over its continuing failure to extradite a former KGB officer for the killing of the Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko. Sir Anthony Brenton said Anglo-Russia relations were not in crisis but there were sharp differences over the Litvinenko affair.

As the battle for Islamic Somalia continues, the Youth Islamic Movement have released a fresh report that details a multi-pronged operation that they carried out in Mogadishu, with some attacks in the Bakara market that mainstream media claims is “returning to normal” and also in the city of Afgooye.

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has extended the deadline for the 23 Koreans it is holding for another 24 hours as talks are underway to meet their demands to release Taliban prisoners in exchange while their Mujahideen carried out various attacks including destroying two US supply vehicles.

Six foreign medics convicted of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV were freed on Tuesday after a partnership deal between Tripoli and the European Union ended their eight-year ordeal.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, making his first public comments as the international community’s Mideast peace envoy, urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders Tuesday to take advantage of a new “sense of possibility” in the region.

Iraqi police say a suicide car bomber has killed at least 26 people and wounded about 70 others in the southern town of Hillah.

Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, last week (16 July) authorised the creation of a higher council for science and technology and a science and technology development fund.

Egyptian postal workers occupied the Egyptian Postal Service building in the capital Cairo last week.

Hidden away in a concrete loading bay around the side of a major Cairo postal office, about 100 workers in their 20s and 30s gather among a forest of placards.

The body headed by Egypt’s official religious advisor on Tuesday denied he had said that Muslims were free to change their faith, as had been reported by a US Washington Post-Newsweek forum on Islam.