North Korea's military threatened Sunday to fire at South Korea, as Seoul prepared to start annual joint drills with U.S. troops — maneuvers Pyongyang says are a rehearsal for an invasion.

The North's military warned that it would shoot directly at South Korean border towns and destroy them if Seoul continued to allow activists to launch propaganda leaflets toward the communist country, Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency said. The warning was conveyed to South Korea's military earlier Sunday, it said.

Central Bank Governor Riyad Salameh has said U.S. officials confirmed to him that no other Lebanese bank would be targeted by the Treasury Department.

Salameh, who is currently in Washington, told Marcel Ghanem’s Kalam al-Nass talk show on Thursday that the U.S. “isn’t targeting Lebanon’s banking sector.”

Paraguay extradited three Lebanese men to the United States on Thursday — two on drug trafficking charges and another who faces trial in Philadelphia for allegedly selling stolen cell phones and used cars to raise funds for Hizbullah.

Paraguayan anti-drug trafficking agent Maria Mercedes Castineira told The Associated Press that the three men were put on a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration plane after being held for months in Paraguayan jails.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat on Thursday revealed that he has advised Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun against trying to eliminate President Michel Suleiman's role in the Lebanese political life.

"I told General Aoun when he approached me concerning his demand to get the interior portfolio (in the new cabinet) that there is a president who has played a good role and who cannot be eliminated," Jumblat said in an interview on LBC TV network.

A Saudi man has been arrested for allegedly buying chemicals and equipment to make a bomb and researching U.S. targets, including the Dallas home of former president George W. Bush, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Thursday.

Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, 20, a Saudi national who came to Texas on student visa in 2008, was arrested late Wednesday and faces charges of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.

Somali pirates killed four Americans Tuesday, including a retired couple onboard their hijacked yacht in a sudden violent turn to efforts to end a hostage drama, the U.S. military said.

Four Somali pirates also died, two of them killed by U.S. special forces in one of the deadliest endings to a raft of hostage-takings off the coast of Somalia that are often resolved through ransom payments.

Syrian President Bashar Assad on Tuesday told a delegation of visiting U.S. senators that Arab leaders should tune in to their people's needs, state-run SANA news agency reported.

As anti-regime revolts rock several Arab nations, Assad said it is necessary "to better understand the will of the people and to carry out policies that reflect" their demands, SANA reported.

As pro-democracy uprisings spread across the Middle East, Saudi authorities are feeling increasingly isolated and concerned that Washington may no longer be a reliable backer, officials and diplomats told the New York Times.

“The Saudis are completely encircled by the problem, from Jordan to Iraq to Bahrain to Yemen,” said one Arab diplomat, voicing a view that is common in the halls of power in Riyadh.

Around 3,000 Palestinians gathered in the West Bank on Sunday to protest against the U.S. veto that nixed a Security Council resolution on Israeli settlements.

The crowd massed in Ramallah's Manara Square, a central roundabout in the West Bank city, waving banners and shouting slogans against the American administration.

Premier-designate Najib Miqati’s nephew is reportedly in Washington in an attempt to garner the support of the Obama administration for the billionaire businessman’s future government.

Informed sources told pan-Arab daily al-Hayat in remarks published Sunday that Azmi Taha Miqati is discussing with low-ranking U.S. officials ways to garner support for the new cabinet.