Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi's regime.

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, Mr al-Hasidi admitted that he had recruited "around 25" men from the Derna area in eastern Libya to fight against coalition troops in Iraq. Some of them, he said, are "today are on the front lines in Adjabiya".

Mr al-Hasidi insisted his fighters "are patriots and good Muslims, not terrorists," but added that the "members of al-Qaeda are also good Muslims and are fighting against the invader".

Gaza Strip- Israeli troops fired Friday to push back Gaza crowds surging toward Israel's border fence with the Hamas-ruled territory, killing one Palestinian and wounding 19 in the first violence since a truce between Israel and Hamas took hold a day earlier.

Hamas security tried to defuse the situation and keep the crowds away from the border, signaling the incident is unlikely to jeopardize the Egyptian-brokered cease-fire. The truce, which calls for an end to Gaza rocket fire on Israel and Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, came after eight days of cross-border fighting, the bloodiest between Israel and Hamas in four years.

On Friday, hundreds of Palestinians approached Israel's border fence in several locations in southern Gaza.

In the past, Israel's military barred Palestinians from getting close to the fence, and soldiers routinely opened fire on violators to enforce a 300-meter-wide no-go zone meant to prevent infiltrations into Israel. Since the cease-fire, growing numbers of Gazans have entered the no-go zone, testing expectations that such restrictions would now be lifted.

In one incident captured by Associated Press video, several dozen Palestinians, most of them young men, approached the fence, coming close to a group of Israeli soldiers standing on the other side. Some Palestinians briefly talked to the soldiers, while others appeared to be taunting them with chants of "God is Great" and "Morsi, Morsi," in praise of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, whose mediation led to the truce. At one point, a soldier shouted in Hebrew, "Go there, before I shoot you," and pointed away from the fence, toward Gaza. The soldier then dropped to one knee, assuming a firing position. Eventually, a burst of automatic fire was heard, but it was not clear whether any of the casualties were from this incident.

Most of those approaching the fence were young men, but the crowds also included farmers hoping they could once again farm lands in the buffer zone. Speaking by phone from the buffer zone, 19-year-old Ali Abu Taimah said he and his father were checking three acres of family land that have been fallow for several years.


"When we go to our land, we are telling the occupation (Israel) that we are not afraid at all," he said.

Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra said a 20-year-old man was killed and 19 people were wounded by Israeli fire near the border.

Israel's military said roughly 300 Palestinians approached the security fence at several locations in southern Gaza, tried to damage it and cross into Israel. Soldiers fired warning shots in the air to distance the Palestinians from the fence, but after they refused to move back, troops fired at their legs, the military said. It also said a Palestinian infiltrated into Israel in the course of the unrest, but he was returned to Gaza.

The truce allowed both Hamas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to step back from the brink of a full-fledged war. Over eight days, Israel's aircraft carried out some 1,500 strikes on Hamas-linked targets, while Gaza fighters peppered Israel with roughly the same number of rockets.

The fighting killed 166 Palestinians, including dozens of civilians, and six Israelis.

In Cairo, Egypt is hosting separate talks with Israeli and Hamas envoys on the next phase of the cease-fire - a new border deal for blockaded Gaza. Hamas demands lifting of all border restrictions, while Israel insists that Hamas must halt weapons smuggling to the territory.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the Israeli regime was created to wage wars, stoke instability and foment discord in the Middle East in order to help the arrogant powers maintain control over the region.

"The main mission of the Zionist regime is to create wars and conflicts and it has been created to stoke division and wage wars in the region so that the hegemons can control the region," Ahmadinejad said at a press conference in Pakistan on Thursday.

He was speaking on the sidelines of the summit of the Group of Eight Developing Countries (D8) in Pakistan on Thursday.

Israeli media say an Iron Dome missile fired to intercept Palestinian Grad rockets missed its target and landed near one of the busiest highways in the Israeli city of Ashdod on November 21.

The Iron Dome missile shield marked another failure as its missile went in a wrong direction toward a busy highway instead of heading upwards to the Palestinian rockets, and caused an explosion only 30 meters from the road, the media stated.

An Egypt-mediated ceasefire agreement on Wednesday ended eight days of Israeli attacks on the besieged Gaza Strip that killed more than 160 Palestinians and injured about 1,200 others.

At least one Palestinian has been killed and seven others injured by Israeli fire in the southern Gaza Strip despite an Egypt-mediated ceasefire.

Medical sources said a 21-year-old Palestinian lost his life on Friday as Israeli forces opened fire in the village of Khuzaa, east of Khan Yunis.

The Palestinian emergency service identified the dead man as Abdelhadi Qdeih Anwar, a farmer who wanted to check on his farm which lies adjacent to the heavily-guarded border with the occupied lands.

Reports say seven other Palestinians also suffered gunshot wounds.

Only 36% of Singaporeans report feeling positive or negative emotions on a daily basis, compared to 60% in the Philippines

Never mind its temperate 28C weather, low unemployment rate and high per-capita GDP - Singapore is the most emotionless society in the world, according to a new Gallup poll, beating the traditionally po-faced Georgia, Lithuania and Russia in a survey of more than 150 nations.

Asking respondents questions such as "Did you feel well-rested yesterday?", "Were you treated with respect all day yesterday?" and "Did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday?", the survey found that Singaporeans were the least likely to reveal experiencing any emotions at all.

Just 36% of Singaporeans reported feeling positive or negative emotions on a daily basis, while 60% of Filipinos recorded regularly feeling both - the highest response rate of any country worldwide.

In 2010, the Belarussian opposition leader Andrei Sannikov took part in the country's presidential election. He was under no illusions he might "win".

Since taking power in 1994, the country's hardline president, Alexander Lukashenko, had maintained an iron grip on power. But Sannikov was unprepared for the regime's sudden, violent crackdown, the worst in 20 years.

On the evening of the vote, Sannikov and nearly 30,000 opposition supporters rallied in Minsk's freezing central square. His recollection of what happened next is hazy.

Riot police grabbed Sannikov, pushed him to the ground and then beat him savagely. "I lost consciousness," he says, speaking in his first newspaper interview since fleeing Belarus. "My wife and friend covered me with their bodies. They saved my life."

When he came round, Sannikov couldn't walk. A secret police officer had smashed his knees with a metal shield, he says - his leg was in agony. Friends helped him stagger into a journalist's car.

Former French president denies taking £120,000 from L'Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt to help his re-election campaign

Nicolas Sarkozy has been questioned by a judge over allegations that he received envelopes stuffed with cash to fund his successful 2007 election campaign.

The donations are said to have come from the L'Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, the richest woman in France. The former president was also questioned over allegations that he and his supporters took advantage of the 90-year-old billionaire's frail state of mind, and that he used his presidential power to hamper criminal investigations into the scandal.

Sarkozy, who lost his immunity from prosecution when he failed to secure a second term in office in May, has denied any wrongdoing.

The National Security Agency has shot down a Freedom of Information Act request for details about an elusive presidential order that may allow the government to deploy the military within the United States for the supposed sake of cybersecurity.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) reports on Tuesday that their recent FOIA request for information about a top-secret memo signed last month by US President Barack Obama has been rejected [PDF]. Now attorneys for EPIC say they plan to file an appeal to get to the bottom of Presidential Policy Directive 20.

Although the executive order has been on the books for a month now, only last week did details emerge about the order after the Washington Post reported that Pres. Obama's signature to the top-secret directive could allow the White House to send in recruits from the Pentagon to protect America's cyber-infrastructure.

Because Presidential Policy Directive 20 is classified, the exact wording of the elusive document has been a secret kept only by those with first-hand knowledge of the memo. For their November 14 article, the Post spoke with sources that saw the document to report that the directive "effectively enables the military to act more aggressively to thwart cyberattacks on the nation's web of government and private computer networks."

In response to the Post's report, EPIC filed a FOIA request to find out if the policy directive could mean military deployment within the United States, especially since the sources who have seen the memo say it allows the Pentagon to pursue actions against adversaries within a vaguely described terrain known only as "cyberspace."

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has issued a new constitutional declaration to expand his powers, ordering retrials of the ex-regime officials over the 2011 clampdown on protesters.

Under the new declaration, no judicial body can dissolve the Constituent Assembly that is currently writing a new constitution.

"The president can issue any decision or measure to protect the revolution," Presidential Spokesman Yasser Ali said while reading out the constitutional declaration on television on Thursday.

"The constitutional declarations, decisions and laws issued by the president are final and not subject to appeal," he added.