Financial markets reel for second day

World stock markets tumbled for a second straight day on Tuesday, with investors unnerved by the risk of a full-blown global financial crisis despite huge cash injections from central banks.

Wall Street continued the rout that began in Asia and spread to European exchanges a day after US investment giant Lehman Brothers stunned the market with a bankruptcy filing.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 0.54 percent in early trade, largely on fears that insurance giant American International Group may be the next credit-crunch victim. AIG shares plummeted as much as 70 percent at the open.

However,later in the day,Wall Street steadied and managed to move into positive territory on growing speculation the US government would come to AIG's rescue because the risk of letting it fail would be too great.

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Female suicide bomber kills at least 20 Iraqis during iftar

A female suicide bomber blew herself up in a crowd of people during an iftar in the Iraqi province of Diyala on Monday, killing at least 20 people and wounding around 30, a top military officer said.

General Abdel Karim alRubaie, the commander of Iraqi troops in Diyala, north of Baghdad, said the attack was in the town of Bala Druz, south of the provincial capital Baquba. He said the bomber blew herself up at around 7:30 pm when people had gathered to break the Ramadan fast at the home of a detainee who was released from a US military prison on Sunday.

Baquba police Lieutenant Ali Ahmed also confirmed the attack,saying the former detainee, a police officer, had arranged a special dinner on Monday for his friends and relatives when the attack took place.Ahmed said the released detainee was killed in the blast, along with his father and another senior police officer from Bala Druz.

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Iran's foreign minister insists cooperation with International Atomic Energy Agency‘sincere'

Iran's cooperation with the United Nations nuclear watchdog has been sincere and serious, its foreign minister said Sunday, a day ahead of the release of a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on the issue.

Diplomats told Reuters last week that an IAEA inquiry into whether Iran covertly researched how to assemble an atom bomb appeared to have stalled while Tehran continued to expand a sensitive uranium enrichment program.

The diplomats said they expected this to be reflected in the agency's report Monday amid faltering pressure on Iran, with Russia and Western powers at loggerheads over Georgia and the imminent departure of the Bush administration in the US.

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Non-Americans still doubt Al-Qaeda perpetrated 9/11

Seven years after the September 11 attacks, there is no consensus outside the United States that Islamist militants from Al-Qaeda were responsible, according to the findings of an international poll published on Wednesday.

The survey of 16,063 people in 17 nations found majorities in only nine countries believe Al-Qaeda was behind the attacks on New York and Washington that killed about 3,000 people in 2001.

US officials squarely blame Al-Qaeda, whose leader, Osama bin Laden, has boasted of organizing the suicide attacks by his followers using hijacked commercial airliners.

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Oyster serves up 26 pearls at Tyre restaurant

Lebanese woman working in a restaurant kitchen found 26 pearls in an oyster she was preparing for the table and is to submit the find to the "Guinness Book of Records." Amal Salha, 50, said she was helping out her son in his Al-Fanar restaurant, on the waterfront in the Southern port of Tyre, when she made the astonishing find on Monday evening.

"I couldn't believe it," she told AFP."I was in the process of opening the shells when I found a number of shining pearls inside one of them," she said."I was so startled I screamed.

"It was so beautiful. It looked like a bunch of grapes."

After counting them, there turned out to be 26 pearls of varying sizes inside the oyster, which had been harvested off the Lebanese coast.

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Sunni, Alawite leaders sign truce deal in Tripoli

Sunni and Alawite leaders in Tripoli and the North signed a six-item reconciliation agreement on Monday in an effort to curb tensions following recent sectarian fighting in which at least 22 people died.

The reconciliation meeting was held in the evening at the home of the mufti of Tripoli and the North, Sheikh Malek alShaar, under the auspices of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

Siniora read the text of the agreement, stressing that the city of Tripoli was against all forms of internal strife.

"Tripoli is against internal strife and refuses to be an arena of conflicts for foreign parties," he said.

Siniora arrived in Tripoli earlier on Monday, attending an iftar banquet at the residence of former Premier Omar Karami before joining the signing ceremony for the "Tripoli Document," which calls for eliminating all armed action in the North, handing over security to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), allowing displaced people to re turn to their homes

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‘500 missing' as landslide crushes Cairo shantytown

Hopes of finding survivors trapped under giant boulders began to fade on Sunday, a day after a massive rockslide flattened homes in a north Cairo shantytown, burying whole families under the rubble.

"There is little hope of finding anyone alive," an officer at the scene told AFP. "The heat and dust are unbearable, the people standing here can hardly take it, let alone those trapped inside."

He said residents had been ordered to vacate the area in order to tear down some of the homes to make way for cranes and heavy lifting machinery which had been unable to access the scene of Saturday's accident.

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Birthdays still get a fair shake despite Saudi ban

When Hala al Masaad invited her girlfriends over to celebrate her 18th birthday with cake and juice, the high school student was stepping into an unusual public debate. Is celebrating birthdays un-Islamic? Saudi Arabia's most senior Muslim cleric recently denounced birthday parties as an unwanted foreign influence, but another prominent cleric declared they were okay.

That has left Masaad with mixed feelings about her low key celebration last month. She loves birthday parties, she says, because they make her feel that she has "moved from one stage of life to another." "But I sometimes feel I'm doing something haram," she said sheepishly.

The Saudi ban on birthdays is in line with the strict interpretation of Islam followed by the conservative Wahhabi version of Hanbali Islam to which the kingdom adheres. All Christian and even most Muslim feasts are also prohibited because they are considered alien customs the Saudi clerics don't sanction.

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Nasrallah reaches out to family of slain LAF helicopter plot

Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said on Thursday that his group will not surrender its weapons "as long as Israeli threats persist."

"These weapons will remain because they are used for defense," Nasrallah said in a televised speech during an iftar hosted by the Hizbullah Support Committee.

Nasrallah also reiterated that Hizbullah will destroy Israel if the Jewish state launches a new attack on Lebanon.

He said the Israeli administration and military were well aware that their navy and air force "failed to achieve any military victories [during the summer 2006 war] … They caused destruction but they did not succeed on the military level."

"Israel's elite military power will be destroyed in the South and in the Western Bekaa as well as in any place they might target in Lebanon," he added.

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Pakistani premier survives assassination bid

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani escaped an apparent assassination attempt when two shots hit his motorcade Wednesday, just three days before the country's presidential election.

Officials said Gilani was not in the targeted car at the time, but the brazen daytime attack underscored the political turmoil and violence that have been shadowing the world's only nuclear-armed Islamic nation.

Gilani's spokesman initially said he was in the stricken vehicle but later declined to confirm that, amid the confusion surrounding the shooting in Rawalpindi, the garrison town that is home to Pakistan's military headquarters.

"Two bullets hit the window glass of the bulletproof car," the spokesman, Zahid Bashir, told AFP."By the grace of God, the prime minister is safe."

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Restaurants all geared up for Ramadan rush

Beirut's food stores and restaurants have been getting ready for Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting, which began Monday at sunrise.

In Hamra, the shelves of Brothers Market, a corner store, have been fully stocked with goods to meet the needs of those who have chosen to fast.

Large bottles of date, apricot and rose-flavored jallab are available, as well as dates, dried apricots and raisins.

Abdel-Kader Hamdi, an employee at Brothers' Market, said people generally purchase simple foods during Ramadan.

Many buy ingredients for the traditional Lebanese salads, fattoush and tabbouleh, while staying away from salty foods, like cheeses. Dates are also popular, as they are traditionally one of the first foods to be eaten at iftar, the breaking of each day's fast.

Despite the shop's new range of Ramadan products, Hamdi has no doubt that the most popular item during the month-long period of fasting will be sweets.

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Khaddam scoffs at life jail term handed down by Syrian court

Former Syrian Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam said Sunday that a life jail term issued against him for "treason" is proof the Damascus government is transforming the country into a prison for its people.

"This verdict does not worry me or affect my determination," the former senior official turned opposition figure,who now lives in exile in Paris, said in a statement sent to AFP by his office.

The sentence of life in prison with hard labor showed "the isolation of the Syrian regime, which is transforming the country into a huge prison and increasing its repression of the people," the statement said.

A Syrian lawyer close to the prosecution, Hossam Ed-dine Habash, said on Saturday that a military tribunal held in Damascus had on August 17 sentenced Khaddam, 73, to hard labor for life on 13 charges, including high treason.

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