The top Iraqi leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq has been arrested and told interrogators that Osama Ben Laden’s inner circle wields considerable influence over the group, the US command said Wednesday.

Republicans in the US Senate on Wednesday blocked a Democratic measure which would have required President George W. Bush to pull most combat troops out of Iraq by the end of April 2008.

A year after his Fateh movement was trounced at the polls, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Wednesday he will call new legislative elections, a move designed to freeze the Islamist Hamas from power.

A RUSSIAN hitman planned to execute an outspoken “enemy of Moscow” at the Hilton Hotel on London’s Park Lane, The Sun can reveal.

Al-Qaeda has regenerated and is plotting attacks against the United States, according to a US intelligence report.

At least 16 Pakistani soldiers are reported to have been killed in an ambush against a military convoy near the Afghan border.

Four puppet police officers were killed and at least eight seriously injured in an explosion in Dagestan, Russian occupation sources reported.

The head of the UN’s atomic energy agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, has welcomed Iran’s decision to allow inspections of its heavy water reactor at Arak.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has called for early elections in the Palestinian territories, denouncing Hamas and declaring “even the devil cannot match their lies”.

The U.S. military on Wednesday announced the arrest of a senior leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, an insurgent who, the military said, is casting himself as a “conduit” between the top leaders of al Qaeda and al Qaeda in Iraq.