UNITED NATIONS (AFP) — The Security Council was to debate changes Thursday to a draft resolution toughening UN sanctions on Iran as sponsors stressed the importance of a united response to Tehran’s nuclear defiance.

BASRA (Reuters) — Gunmen clashed on Thursday in the port city of Basra, the hub of Iraq’s great southern oil field that is the source of most of the country’s wealth.

MOGADISHU (Reuters) — The Somali government said on Thursday that Al Qaeda had made a young Islamist commander its leader in Mogadishu as fighting raged for a second day in the coastal capital.

DUBAI — Stung by a mounting number of deaths on increasingly clogged and unsafe roads, the bustling Gulf emirate of Dubai has declared war on reckless drivers.

LONDON — Gordon Brown may lead efforts to revive the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a way of tackling Iran’s atomic ambitions, his most pressing foreign policy challenge once he becomes British prime minister.

JUBA (Reuters) — South Sudan’s president has called for rebels from the western Darfur region to meet in his capital to build consensus ahead of possible peace talks to end a four-year-old insurgency and humanitarian crisis.

RAMADI — Crouched around the camera’s high-tech screen, the US Marines watch flames burn the camouflage netting around one of their lookout posts on a nearby roof, just hit by a burst of machinegun fire.

ERBIL (AFP) — The prime minister of Iraqi Kurdistan raised fresh calls on Thursday for a referendum to decide the future of the country’s crucial oil hub of Kirkuk, warning that Kurdish patience had limits.

BEIT LID, West Bank — Urban warfare exercises by Israeli troops in full battle gear have been giving Palestinians in this West Bank village some sleepless nights.

ROME // Italy’s strategy of negotiating the release of Taliban militants in exchange for an Italian hostage in Afghanistan has put Premier Romano Prodi under fire days before a crucial parliamentary vote on keeping the country’s troops in Afghanistan.The move has drawn the ire of conservative opponents – whose backing …