Meast [6]

Following is the text of the English-language announcement issued by Prime Minister Ehud Barak's office on Thursday announcing an understanding with the Palestinians to bring about an end to violence:

Three people have been injured in the second explosion in a week involving British nationals in Saudi Arabia.

Two years ago, Noga Cohen's children escaped injury when a suicide bomber blew himself up near their school bus. But on Monday another bomb struck home.

State security officers have arrested two more Kuwaitis suspected of belonging to a terror group planning attacks on American forces in Kuwait, and a third has been detained in Qatar, the Interior Ministry said Sunday.

Human rights activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim looked relaxed and confident as he stood behind bars Saturday with his fellow defendants at the start of their trial, but his lawyer admitted to feeling a little less calm.

Seventeen-year-old Aysegul grabbed her father's shotgun locked herself in her room and threatened to shoot herself unless her father agreed that she could marry the man she loved.

In a case seen as a test of Turkey's poor human rights record, an appeals court on Tuesday acquitted 15 teen-agers who were tortured for putting up leftist political posters.

Turkey's top court expects to rule on a bid to close the country's Islamic main opposition party by the end of the year, the state-run Anatolian news agency said on Friday.

Turkey's constitutional court will start hearing a case on whether to ban the Islamist Virtue party, the country's main opposition party, on December 12, the deputy chairman of the court said on Monday.

A Turkish court rejected on Wednesday an appeal by Necmettin Erbakan, an Islamist former prime minister, against a one-year jail sentence for

Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash said Friday that he was pulling out of U.N.-sponsored reunification talks until his breakaway state is granted equal status to the Cyprus government.

Turkey's health minister urged TV stations Saturday to replace Pokemon cartoons with other children's programs after a 7-year-old girl jumped off a balcony apparently believing she was a Pokemon character with superhuman powers.

Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said in remarks published on Tuesday that Turkey must

A Turkish protest singer wanted in Turkey for alleged links to separatist Kurdish rebels died of a heart attack on Thursday, a spokeswoman for the Kurdish community in France said.

A Turkish soldier lost a leg on Tuesday in a bomb blast in the southeast of the country, local officials said.

Turkey's National Intelligence Agency (MIT) chief said in remarks published Tuesday that it would be against Turkish interests to hang Kurdish rebel chief Abdullah Ocalan, sentenced to death last year for treason.

Turkish troops killed four Kurdish rebels in clashes in southeast Turkey, the Anatolia news agency reported Saturday.

Two four-story apartment buildings in Lebanon collapsed on sleeping residents early Saturday, killing at least three people and injuring about 26, officials said.

An explosion in the Gaza Strip early Monday wounded 12 people, four of them seriously, Israeli radio reported.

A bomb blast in a park in an Istanbul slum injured two Turks Sunday, reports said. Another person was treated for shock.

The United Arab Emirates told the United States to start being fair to Palestinians struggling against Israel, U.S. officials with visiting Defense Secretary William Cohen said on Saturday.

A 24-hour ultimatum given by Yemeni authorities to a tribe to free a Swedish engineer it is holding hostage ended Wednesday without his release, but security officials said negotiations with the kidnappers were ongoing.

The United Nations and Iraq have agreed to begin talks on ending the two-year deadlock over U.N. weapons inspections and 10-year-old sanctions at the start of the new year, U.N. officials said.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan conferred with U.S., British and European representatives on efforts to end the 26-year division of Cyprus.

The United Nations condemned a cross-border Hezbollah attack on Israeli troops as a serious violation that threatened to spark a new cycle of violence.

Calling for an end to violations on the Lebanese-Israeli border, U.N. Security Council members Tuesday told Beirut to move its forces into the entire southern area of the country vacated by Israel in May.

The U.N. World Food Program (WFP) said Friday it would begin an emergency operation to feed about 300,000 Palestinians hit by Israel's closing their access to jobs amid continuing violence.

The United Nations said Wednesday it had received assurances that Syria isn't illegally importing oil from Iraq, although Iraq is getting its pipeline to Syria ready.

United Arab Emirates police rescued two Pakistani brothers aged 6 and 4 who had been kidnapped to work as jockeys in camel races, newspapers reported on Sunday.

The U.N. Sanctions Committee decided Monday that Iraq couldn't price its oil below fair market value, as Baghdad had proposed, leading to fears that exports may be threatened, diplomats said.

Up to 30 people were feared dead after their bus overturned in an irrigation canal in northern Egypt, security sources said on Saturday.

An explosion in the Gaza Strip early Monday wounded 12 people, four of them seriously, Israeli radio reported.

The Israeli army, battling a Palestinian revolt in the West Bank and Gaza, came under attack in the Lebanese border area as Prime Minister Ehud Barak tried to enlist Egypt's help in peace negotiations.

Anxious to contain violence in the Middle East, Clinton administration officials said on Friday a fact-finding committee should quickly start its probe of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians.

U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen warned on Saturday that the cycle of violence between Israelis and Palestinians could spread to other countries in the region.

An oil price bonanza could prove an embarrassing handicap for OPEC when the cartel steps up a lobbying campaign against an international climate protection pact this month.

Leah Rabin, widow of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, died Sunday of cancer at the age of 72, hospital officials said.

At least three plots against American targets in Yemen failed in the past year before last month's suicide bombing of the USS Cole, Yemeni sources close to the investigation said Saturday.

Violent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians continued overnight in the West Bank while Israeli authorities said they would not retaliate for a Palestinian car bombing which killed two Israelis.

Weeks of violent clashes in the West Bank have forced Israel's compulsive gamblers to choose the latter now that the battles have shut down the Palestinian answer to Las Vegas.

Yugoslavia's President Vojislav Kostunica said Friday that he wanted to boost relations with Israel and announced plans to become the first Yugoslav president to visit Israel since its founding in 1948.