World Highlights

¤ Pakistan and international relief agencies scrambled to deliver vital aid to remote parts of the quake-stricken country yesterday as a top official complained the world was not doing enough to help. With winter approaching and rain predicted soon, relief workers were racing against time to reach countless people cut off by the deadly October 8 quake and feared likely to die of hunger, cold and untended injuries unless help arrives fast.

¤ San Diego airport's commuter terminal was evacuated yesterday after baggage screeners found what initially appeared to be bomb components but turned out to be a toy, security officials said. Earlier in the morning two Los Angeles area airports received bomb threats, although no explosives were found, and all three airports were operating normally by mid-morning.

¤ Bombs exploded near magistrates courts in four Spanish towns yesterday and police said they suspected the armed Basque separatist group ETA was to blame. The explosions damaged buildings but no one was injured, officials said.

¤ The European Commission said yesterday it had sent a warning letter to Italy, which plans to build a nearly four-kilometre bridge to the island of Sicily, asking for information on an insufficiently thorough environmental impact assessment which was to study how the bridge would affect bird habitats. Italy has failed to adopt measures that would prevent the deterioration of local habitats and the unsettling of birds in two important areas, according to WWF.

¤ Refugees took 34 aid workers hostage in Darfur's largest refugee camp yesterday, but later released all but five, UN officials and sources in the aid community said. The hostage takers were demanding the release of a local tribal leader in the restive Kalma camp who was arrested by the authorities on Sunday, they said.

¤ Detlev Mehlis, the head of a UN probe into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who has implicated Syria in the killing, urged Damascus yesterday to launch its own investigation and "fill in the gaps" on those who organised it.