Eurasia Press & News

AVIGNON, France: France is looking at the possibility of sending a European Union (EU) mission to help security in the Palestinian territories, diplomats said yesterday before a meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers.

DAMASCUS, Syria – A Hamas official has confirmed that the Damascus-based leader of the militant Palestinian group has promised to deliver to captured Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit a letter from his father.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Dmitry Medvedev accused the West on Saturday of acting provocatively in and around the Black Sea, where the United States is using warships to deliver humanitarian aid to Georgia.

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) – An earthquake measuring 5.6 hit Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush region on Saturday, but caused no casualties, a provincial official said.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, swept to victory in a presidential election on Saturday.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – A car-bomb went off by a police post in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar on Saturday killing at least six people and wounding about 40, police and hospital staff said.

BERLIN (Reuters) – The conflict between Georgia and Russia requires a rethink of a planned pipeline which will pump Russian gas under the Baltic Sea to Germany, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told a German newspaper on Saturday.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Strains in Russia-EU relations over Russia’s war in Georgia pose a long-term threat to investment flows and risk further complications when critics of Kremlin policy assume the EU presidency over the next 12 months.

At least 20 people have been killed by a rockslide which destroyed homes in Cairo, emergency services say.

Iraq is to ask US officials for an explanation after a new book suggested the United States had been spying on senior members of the Iraqi government.