Spotlight
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip fired two rockets that hit Israel on Friday, a military spokeswoman said, as a truce declared by the Islamist Hamas ruling the enclave entered its second day.
The spokeswoman told Agence France Presse that the rockets, which struck southern Israel, did not cause casualties or damage.

A man claiming to be the fugitive nephew of late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has requested asylum in Austria after being picked by police in a routine identity check, media reported Friday.
Police spotted the 42-year-old man in the company of two other Iraqi men Thursday at the train station in Traiskirchen, some 10 kilometers (six miles) south of Vienna, Austrian broadcaster ORF reported.

Attacks in Iraq killed at least 12 people and wounded dozens more on Friday, security and medical officials said, in the latest wave of violence sweeping across the country.
A roadside bomb exploded in the morning in the main market in al-Husseiniyah, a Shiite-majority area on Baghdad's northeast outskirts, and another went off after emergency personnel arrived, an interior ministry official said.

At least 143 people were killed in violence across Syria on Thursday, among them 100 civilians and 43 government troops, activists and a rights group said.
"This has been one of the bloodiest days in Syria since the anti-regime revolt broke out in March last year," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told Agence France Presse.

Palestinians said Thursday they had recovered the bodies of two militants from a tunnel damaged by an Israeli air strike on Gaza, raising to 10 the death toll in the territory since Monday.
Thaer Mohammed al-Bik, 30, and Mohammed Zuhair al-Khaldi, 26, were killed by gas fumes as they carried out an inspection of the tunnel hit by Israeli fire on Tuesday, the military wing of Gaza's ruling Hamas movement said.

The speaker of the Iraqi parliament said on Thursday that he had ordered a halt to all work at the legislature until concrete blast walls removed in recent days are put back.
Osama al-Nujaifi said that if the government were confident that the security precaution was no longer necessary, then all of the protective barriers around the entirety of the Green Zone, Baghdad's fortified government and embassy compound, should be removed.

Egypt was on edge on Thursday after the Muslim Brotherhood warned of "confrontation" between the people and the ruling generals unless its candidate is named to succeed toppled president Hosni Mubarak.

U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon discussed the situation in Syria on Thursday with Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a U.N. spokesman said, amid a new diplomatic push to end the crisis.
Ban and Ahmadinejad also spoke about the showdown over Iran's disputed nuclear programs during the talks on the sidelines of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, said U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky.

French police on Thursday detained Iraqi official Sadeq Kazem for questioning after a member of the Iranian opposition filed a complaint alleging torture and war crimes, a judicial source said.
Kazem runs Camp Liberty, where People's Mujahedeen of Iran militants are being moved from their long-time base of Camp Ashraf, the scene of deadly raids by Iraqi forces in 2009 and 2011.

U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan will hold a press conference with the head of the U.N. mission in Syria Robert Mood in Geneva on Friday, the United Nations said.
The conference follows the weekend suspension of patrols by the 300-strong observer team amid intensifying violence.
