Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu is the new Prime Minister-Designate of Israel.

South Korea will retaliate if North Korea attacks its naval ships in waters near their disputed maritime border, the defense chief told lawmakers Friday.
The unusually strong warning comes as North Korea steps up its war rhetoric in anger over South Korean President Lee Myung-bak’s tough stance toward the North.
The North Korean military has said it is “fully ready” for war with the South, and state-run media have warned that clashes between the two sides could break out at any time.

A suicide bomber killed at least 28 people today in a town near Pakistan’s tribal areas, the latest in an escalating series of attacks targeting the country’s Shiite Muslim minority.
Several of the most lethal bombings of recent months have apparently been motivated by sectarian strife, rather than the more typical attacks by Islamic militants against government and military installations.
Many analysts believe Pakistan’s Taliban movement is actively fomenting sectarian violence as a means of sowing chaos and further destabilizing Pakistan’s shaky central government.

The Sri Lankan army says it has captured the last major naval base of Tamil Tiger rebels in the north-east of the island.
It says that about 15 rebel fighters – including three senior commanders – were killed in the fighting at Chalai. There has been no independent confirmation of the report, and no comment from the rebels. Earlier, the government said there would be no ceasefire with the rebels, despite international calls for talks.
Military spokesman Brig Udaya Nanayakkara said that with the capture of Chalai, the army had now brought …

The Arab League has condemned Israel’s seizure of a ship carrying humanitarian aid from Lebanon to the Gaza Strip.
The league’s envoy to the United Nations, Yahya Mahmassani called the interception an act of piracy and asked U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to intervene.
Crew members and journalists aboard the Lebanese ship say Israel’s military fired in the ship’s direction before Israeli forces boarded the vessel. The Israeli military denied it fired on the ship.
Israeli officials said the Lebanese ship was escorted to the Israeli port of Ashdod, and that any aid …

As the Sri Lankan military continued to push into a small corner of the island controlled by separatist guerrillas, three separate artillery attacks on Sunday struck a hospital overflowing with wounded patients, the last of them hitting a ward of women and children, according to international agencies and health workers. At least nine people were killed and 20 were wounded and the dead were still being counted Monday morning.

The Congolese government is broadcasting messages to Rwandan rebels within its borders demanding they surrender, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s communications minister told CNN on Sunday.
“We would … prefer a voluntary disarmament,” Mende Omalanga said. “We are campaigning for them to put [down] their guns.”
So far, about 160 of the estimated 6,500 Rwandan rebels in Congo’s eastern regions have heeded the call and laid down their arms, he said.

Pakistan said security forces had closed five training camps run by Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group blamed for the Mumbai attack, and arrested 124 of its leaders and those of a related charity.
Tension between nuclear-armed neighbours Pakistan and India has been simmering since the late November attack in which gunmen killed 179 people in Mumbai, India’s financial capital.
India has become increasingly frustrated with what it sees as Pakistan’s lack of action. Pakistan has been angered by an Indian suggestion Pakistani state agencies were involved and what it sees as repeated Indian hints …

A suicide car bomb killed four Afghan civilians and wounded 13 more in an attack outside a U.S. military base and the German embassy in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Saturday. A sewage tanker and several cars were burning at the scene and there were bloodstains on the road as police loaded the bodies of three dead civilians onto the back of a pick-up truck.
Fourteen wounded civilians were taken to the nearby Emergency Hospital and one died on the way, hospital officials said.
Six U.S. troops were also wounded by the …

For the first time in three weeks a fragile peace prevailed in the shattered Gaza Strip yesterday, after Hamas responded to Israel’s unilateral ceasefire by announcing a week-long truce of its own.
The Palestinian group fired at least 15 rockets and mortars into southern Israel to show that it had not been crushed. It then gave Israel seven days to withdraw its forces and open Gaza’s border crossings to allow in desperately needed humanitarian aid.