The head of the Turkish armed forces insisted Wednesday on the need for a military incursion into northern Iraq to hunt down Turkish Kurd rebels based there, but said he needed the government’s green light to do so.

A single tooth has clinched the identification of an ancient mummy as that of Queen Hatshepsut, who ruled Egypt about 3,500 years ago, the country’s chief archaeologist said on Wednesday.

A top Sudanese presidential adviser who played a key role in Darfur peace negotiations died early Wednesday in a car accident, a government official said.

Angry demonstrators torched petrol stations and long queues formed at heavily-guarded fuel pumps Wednesday after oil-rich Iran announced the start of fuel rationing, triggering nationwide protests.

America’s No. 2 diplomat in Iraq predicted progress by fall on bringing together Iraq’s feuding factions as violence claimed more lives Wednesday, including 14 people killed in a late night car bombing near a Shiite shrine in the capital.

Tony Blair was Wednesday named special envoy of the Middle East peace Quartet shortly after stepping down as British prime minister and tasked with spearheading efforts to create a Palestinian state.

Israeli army incursions into the Gaza Strip killed at least 12 Palestinians on Wednesday, including eight fighters and a 12-year-old boy, in the bloodiest fighting Gaza has seen since Hamas took control there two weeks ago.

According to sources from Ingushetia, on Tuesday morning of June 26, a mobile squad of Mujahideen attacked a base of Russian occupation gang the so-called “reconnaissance squad”.

He was always a heavy drinker, but until his health problems got bad in the mid-1990s he could usually hold his liquor. The real problem was that he was a man of action who didn’t have an idea in his head.

The authorities of Russia are planning, under pretext of getting ready for possible 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, large-scale construction projects in the immediate proximity to the borders of a World Heritage Object – the “West Caucasus” reserve – and in its buffer zone.