Iranian students stormed part of the British Embassy compound in north Tehran Tuesday night and occupied it for a short time.
The protest came after days of demonstrations in Iran against Israeli attacks on Gaza.
The students, who had been demonstrating in front of the Egyptian Interests Section, close to British Embassy, moved down the road and entered the compound holding Palestinian and Hezbollah flags. They replaced the British flag with the Palestinian flag.

GAZA (Reuters) – Foreign powers stepped up calls on Israel and Hamas on Tuesday to halt hostilities after four days of Israeli air attacks on the Gaza Strip and rocket salvoes by the Islamist militants deep inside the Jewish state.
The Quartet of Middle East peace brokers — the United Nations, United States, Russia and European Union — urged an immediate cease-fire, a U.N. spokeswoman said after telephone consultations by the group’s foreign ministers.
Israeli warplanes destroyed Hamas targets for a fourth day, including five ministerial buildings and a structure belonging …

JERUSALEM: Israel is engaged in an “all-out war with Hamas,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Parliament on Monday as his air force struck at the organization’s civic institutions — the Islamic University, Interior Ministry and presidential guesthouse. The death toll surpassed 350, some 60 of them civilians, according to United Nations officials.
As the conflict passed its third day, with no active diplomacy and anti-Israel protesters taking to the streets around the Arab world, there appeared to be no quick end to the largest assault on Gaza in decades.

As Israel continues its air offensive against Hamas in the Gaza strip, one unsettling specter has emerged from the recent past: the failed campaign to crush the Lebanese militants of Hizballah in July 2006. Lebanon was clearly on the minds of Israel’s military planners. Even as Hamas targets were pounded in Gaza, Israeli jets flew low level saber-rattling sorties over southern Lebanon, a warning to militants not to launch reprisal attacks along Israel’s volatile northern border.
For now, the Shi’ite Hizballah appears to be confining its protests to fiery rhetoric …

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) — The international community piled pressure on Israel to halt its offensive in the Gaza Strip on Monday, as raids on the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas entered their third day.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon added his voice to the 15-member Security Council’s call for an immediate end to hostilities and urged Israel to allow humanitarian aid into the poverty-stricken territory.
“He deplores that violence is continuing today, and he strongly urges once again an immediate stop to all acts of violence,” which has already left more than …

Protesters in Pakistan have taken to the streets to condemn the loss of human life in Gaza, calling for Muslim unity against Israel.
Chanting anti-Israel slogans, protesters in the cities of Karachi, Rawalpindi, Lahore and Islamabad expressed their solidarity with those suffering in Gaza and supported the right of the Palestinians to fight against the Israelis.
Israel has been staging massive air strikes against civilian and military targets in Gaza since Saturday. So far at least 310 people have been killed, many of whom are women and children. Medical sources have …

China confirmed today that it will send naval ships to waters off Somalia to protect against pirates that have attacked 20 percent of its vessel traffic this year, the Foreign Ministry said.
In the first 11 months, 1,265 Chinese commercial ships passed through Somali waters, or about three to four a day, a fifth of which were assaulted by pirates, according to Liu Jianchao, a spokesman for the ministry.

Washington: Counting many elements, including terrorism and nuclear weapons, in Pakistan as causes of international worries, a former top US official has described the South Asian country as an “international migraine”.
“…my own sense is Pakistan has everything that gives you an international migraine. It has nuclear weapons, it has terrorism, extremists, corruption, very poor and it’s in a location that’s really, really important to us. And now with this issue with India. So, I think that the current president and the current secretary of state, who’s on her way to …

ADDIS ABABA : Ethiopia announced on Friday that its troops will withdraw from Somalia by the end of 2008, ending an ill-fated two-year occupation but raising fears of a security vacuum in the war-ravaged country.
With unprepared African Union troops confined to some parts of Mogadishu and joint units not yet operational, a hasty pull-out would leave most of Somalia under the control of the Islamist group Shebab and its allies.
Ethiopian foreign ministry spokesman Wahide Belay said that the deadline for the pullout was announced in a letter sent on Tuesday …

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s former senior antidrug official has been arrested and accused of accepting bribes from a drug cartel, the authorities said Friday.
Noé Ramírez Mandujano, who as the chief of Mexico’s organized crime unit was the closest equivalent to the government’s drug czar, was arrested late Thursday after questioning, said Attorney General Eduardo Medina-Mora.
Mr. Ramírez is the highest-ranking official to come under suspicion in a purge of the police and prosecutors for possible ties to drug traffickers. While he led the unit, known by its Spanish initials as the …