World Highlights

¤ Tens of thousands of Lebanese bid farewell to anti-Syrian publisher and lawmaker Gebran Tueni, turning his funeral into an outpouring of anger against Damascus, which they blame for his murder.

Mr Tueni's assassination on Monday - the third political murder since former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri was killed in February - has caused serious political rifts in Lebanon, bringing the government to the verge of collapse.

The UN Security Council was considering a resolution that could broaden a probe into the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri to include other politically motivated killings.

¤ Israel launched an air strike in the Gaza Strip, killing four Palestinian militants in the latest of a series of military actions since a suicide bombing in the Jewish state last week.

The missile attack occurred against a backdrop of clashes between rival gunmen of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party in a new sign of turmoil before parliamentary elections in January.

Hours later, Khader Habib, a political leader of Islamic Jihad survived a similar strike.

¤ The European Parliament adopted rules drawn up by the European Union to store phone and Internet data for up to two years to fight terrorism and other serious crime.

The measure was approved quickly after being proposed by the European Commission in September, and is part of the 25-nation bloc's response to the terrorist attacks in Madrid last year and in London this year.

¤ Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva would lose next year's election, a poll showed, just days after the former union leader said he had not made up his mind about seeking office again.

¤ East Asian leaders resolved to hold annual talks on strategic issues like trade and security, but even a rare handshake between leaders of Japan and China failed to conceal cracks in the new grouping.

The handshake, after months of feuding between Asia's two biggest economies over their wartime past, came after 16 leaders signed a declaration calling for annual talks on issues that also included health scares such as bird flu and energy security.

¤ The United Nations is getting ready to pull North American and European peacekeepers out of Eritrea and move them to Ethiopia as the Asmara government demanded, diplomats said.

¤ Tanzania's ruling party looked set to extend its four-decade grip on power, but trouble flared on the volatile Zanzibar islands where police fired over a rowdy crowd during the election.