An Egyptian former bank chairman has been arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a maid in a luxury New York hotel less than two weeks after a former IMF chief was indicted on similar charges.

Mahmoud Abdel Salam Omar, 74, the former director of the Bank of Alexandria and now the chairman of the El-Mex Salines Company, was arrested on Monday after the maid accused him of sexually assaulting her, police said.

The Syrian military used heavy machine-guns and artillery in fresh attacks on a town in the country's turbulent heartland Tuesday, killing at least one person, activists said.

The Local Coordination Committees in Syria, which helps organize and document the country's protests, said heavy gunfire could be heard in Rastan, which is a few kilometers north of the central city of Homs and has been under attack since Sunday.

A South African law firm is involved in talks to defend Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi against charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court, a newspaper said Tuesday.

According to The Times newspaper, Libyan officials entered into a "mandate agreement" with Langa Attorneys to provide legal advice and services to Gadhafi and other top leaders three weeks ago.

Israeli troops arrested 12 suspected members of Islamic Jihad overnight near the northern West Bank town of Jenin, the army said on Tuesday.

Palestinian security forces confirmed the arrests, saying two of those detained were women.

Fierce fighting erupted around the Sanaa home of dissident tribal chief Sheikh Sadiq al-Ahmar on Tuesday as a truce that ended deadly clashes last week broke down, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported.

There wrere also heavy exchanges between the tribesmen and loyalist troops around the headquarters of the military police and the official Saba news agency, as well as in a major thoroughfare, the correspondent said.

South African President Jacob Zuma arrived on Monday in Libya for talks on ending the conflict as NATO said Moammer Gadhafi's "reign of terror" was nearing its end and top military officers deserted him.

In Rome, eight generals announced they had defected from Gadhafi's forces -- and also said the regime's army was now at 20-percent capacity.

Forces loyal to Yemen's embattled president killed 20 protesters as they crushed a sit-in in Taez, an organizer said on Monday, as suspected al-Qaida gunmen killed six soldiers in the south.

Security service agents backed by army and Republican Guards stormed the protest against President Ali Abdullah Saleh in the city's Freedom Square, shooting at demonstrators and setting fire to their tents, protesters said.

At least 15 people were killed in a Syrian crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, activists said Monday, as the U.N. condemned the "shocking" brutality of President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

Dozens of tanks for a second straight day circled towns and villages in the Homs area, north of Damascus.

The Egyptian government is having difficulty exerting full control over the Sinai Peninsula, allowing terror groups to flourish there, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.

Netanyahu, who was addressing the Israeli parliament's foreign affairs and defense committee, also said that changes in the region had seen the Hamas movement begin to shift its activities from its headquarters in Syria to Egypt.

U.N. rights Chief Navi Pillay on Monday slammed the brutality of crackdowns on protestors by government forces in Libya and Syria, saying the actions were shocking in their disregard for human rights.

"The brutality and magnitude of measures taken by the governments in Libya and now Syria have been particularly shocking in their outright disregard for basic human rights," Pillay told the U.N. Human Rights Council.