Today's other stories in brief
US sends aid to Lebanon as truce holds
NAHR AL-BARED - The US and Arab allies sent military aid to Lebanon yesterday and the Lebanese army deployed extra troops to a Palestinian camp where it has been battling Islamist militants this week.
A fragile truce held between the army and the Fatah al-Islam militant group in northern Lebanon at the Nahr al-Bared camp, where the faction is based, despite sporadic clashes.
Lebanese defence minister Elias al-Murr said the government was leaving room for negotiations but the army would act if necessary. A delegation from the main Palestinian factions has been holding extensive meetings with Lebanese leaders in a bid to end the crisis. - (Reuters)
Militants offer truce to Israel
GAZA - Palestinian armed factions signalled yesterday that they may stop rocket salvoes from Gaza into Israel if Israel stops military action in the territory, softening earlier truce terms, a source said.
The source, a Palestinian official familiar with truce talks between the factions and representatives of moderate president Mahmoud Abbas, said the militants gave 48 hours in which to persuade Israel to accept the proposed Gaza ceasefire. - (Reuters)
Seven survive Peru air crash
LIMA - A Peruvian airforce aircraft has crashed in dense jungle in the remote northeast of the country but seven of the 13 people aboard have survived.
The De Havilland Twin Otter aircraft lost radar contact late on Thursday after taking off from Iquitos in Peru's vast Amazon region of Loreto, bound for the city of Pucallpa.
"The aircraft has been found by a rescue helicopter and there are seven survivors," regional president Ivan Vazquez said. - (Reuters)
North Korean missiles fired
TOKYO - North Korea has fired several short-range missiles, but the United States and its Asian allies say the launches were part of normal military drills and would not affect talks on Pyongyang's nuclear arms programme.
"It appears to be a routine exercise," Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said yesterday.
The US response to the report by Japan's NHK television that North Korea fired surface-to-ship missiles from its east and west coasts echoed that of Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, who played down the significance of the launches. - (Reuters)
Suu Kyi's house arrest extended
RANGOON - The military junta in Burma (Myanmar) has extended the house arrest of opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi for another year, ignoring international pleas for her release, a government source has said.
"Home Ministry officials went to her residence and read it out to her," the source said of the order issued two days before her detention was set to expire. - (Reuters)
Not just waving but misbehaving
ROME - A man who took his mistress to the beach made the mistake of waving to a film crew on a helicopter covering Italy's bicycle race and was discovered by his wife.
According to media reports, the man was with his younger mistress on a beach in northern Italy when the helicopter passed overhead with a crew covering the Giro d'Italia cycling classic. The man waved, the camera zoomed in, and the couple ended up on live television.
The brother of the man's wife thought it was his sister he was seeing on television and called her on her mobile phone, but she was at home alone and when her husband returned with a sun tan, he had some explaining to do.
- (Reuters)