Israel

As talks between Israel and Palestine have been frozen since last year because of a dispute over settlements, Barack Obama said the US and Jordan both wanted Israelis and Palestinians to go back to the negotiating table, adding that it was "more vital than ever" for Israelis and Palestinians to restart negotiations on a peace deal.

The International Criminal Court chief prosecutor has today announced he is seeking the arrest of Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and two others for crimes against humanity.

Vittorio Arrigoni, a 36 year old Italian pro-Palestinian activist, has been found murdered in the Gaza Strip.

At the Arab Summit in Doha, Qatar, on Monday, 28 March, 2009, Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Qaddafi grabbed a microphone as the conference was about to begin and denounced King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia as a "British product and American ally."

Forget Britain's "Special Relationship" with America, largely a mirage of the Foreign Office and its existence unknown to most Americans. Even as World War II was ending, the cracks in the relationship between Britain and the United States were becoming ever more obvious to contemporaries and for more recent generations can be studied by reading books, both military and political, such as Armageddon and Nemesis by Max Hastings.

Libya appears to be in, or at least on the verge of, a civil war between Colonel Gaddafi loyalists and armed rebels who just a few weeks ago were merely anti-government protestors.

Shares in Bunzl were up on the FTSE 100 in afternoon trading after the outsourcing firm reported a rise in revenue and pre-tax profit in the year ended 31 December 2010.

Voters in the ongoing referendum in South Sudan on independence from the rest of the country have been given a very interesting choice on their ballot papers.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said on Thursday Israel needs to revise its position over peace talks and settlement-building to reach a final accord with the Palestinians.

With Champions League qualifiers decided, the draw for the Group stages comes fairly immediate today with Europe's top teams joined by Tottenham Hotspur, Hapeol Tel Aviv and Slovak champions MSK Zilina.

The Israeli government has said that it will loosen the land blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, in a move that is aimed at allowing more civilian goods into the area, while maintaining an embargo on weapons.

Shares in British banks continued to decline on the FTSE 100 thanks to ongoing concerns over sovereign debt in the eurozone.