Judges overseeing the vote count in Egypt’s parliamentary elections say Islamist parties have won a majority of the contested seats in the first round.

Bowing to pressure from a local militia holding one of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s sons as a prisoner, Prime Minister Abdel Rahim el-Keeb on Tuesday appointed the militia’s commander to be the new defense minister.

If the demonstrations that culminated in February were an uprising against President Hosni Mubarak, the revolt today is against his legacy.

Israel’s president says the international community is closer to pursuing a military solution to the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program than a diplomatic one.

Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavov has warned that a military strike on Iran would be a “very serious mistake” with “unpredictable consequences”, after Israel’s president Shimon Peres said that an attack was increasingly likely.

Tens of thousands of new jobs will be announced today as David Cameron “strains every sinew” to get the sluggish economy moving.

Italian deputies exchanged blows in parliament on Wednesday as tensions over a tough economic reform program came to a head.

Searchers working under floodlights have pulled out an 18-year old university student and a 27-year-old woman from building ruins after a devastating earthquake struck eastern Turkey.

Dubai-based Al Alaan TV have broadcast amateur footage that they claim shows the bodies of Colonel Gaddafi, his son Mutassim and his defence minister Abu Bakr Yunis prior to their burial in the Sahara Desert.

The death toll from eastern Turkey’s 7.2-magnitude earthquake reached 270 Monday even as hundreds of rescuers were removing debris, some with bare hands, and pulling out people alive from collapsed buildings in freezing conditions.