OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AP) — The “Quartet” of international Mideast mediators stepped into the void, signalling it would invite Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for talks in Cairo, after a summit was called off at the last minute.

HEILIGENDAMM, Germany (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin, bitterly opposed to a US missile shield in eastern Europe, told US President George W. Bush on Thursday that Moscow would drop its objections if the system were installed in Azerbaijan.

A BOMB WENT off near a Christian town north of Beirut on Thursday, in the latest string of explosions that have shaken Lebanon since fighting erupted between army troops and Islamists in a northern refugee camp three weeks ago.