Syria has rejected the IAEA’s request for a second inspection of its alleged nuclear site, bombed by Israel last September.

Central Bank of Iran says rising inflation in recent years has intensified the need for a change in the nation’s currency system.

 Iran’s Defense Ministry has announced plans to make public details of the latest developments in the country’s weapons arsenal.

CAIRO (Reuters) – The Sunday edition of the independent Egyptian newspaper al-Dustour, which contained a story about the murder of a Lebanese singer in Dubai, disappeared from the market on Saturday, officials said.

TSKHINVALI, Georgia (Reuters) – Russian troops and tanks took the capital of the separatist Georgian region of South Ossetia on Sunday after a bloody three-day battle as Georgian forces retreated and offered a ceasefire.

KABUL (Reuters) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai urged the world on Sunday to target the Taliban in Pakistan, adding that operations by foreign troops in his country had only led to civilian deaths among Afghans and not success in the war.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Mahmoud Darwish, whose poetry encapsulated the Palestinian cause, will get the equivalent of a state funeral in the West Bank on Tuesday — an honor only previously accorded to PLO leader Yasser Arafat.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – More than 100 Islamist militants and nine Pakistani soldiers were killed in fierce fighting over the last four days in the tribal region of Bajaur, a military spokesman said on Sunday.

ZEMMOURI, Algeria (Reuters) – A suicide car bomb attack on security forces killed at least six civilians east of Algiers late on Saturday, the second such blast this month, authorities in OPEC member Algeria said on Sunday.

AZEFFOUN, Algeria (Reuters) – It looks like any Mediterranean resort: Young women in bikinis frolic in the surf and old folk doze under parasols in the baking heat.