MYANMAR: The military-controlled government of Myanmar agreed today to extend the state of emergency it imposed when the army seized power from an elected government two-and-a-half years ago.

The National Defence & Security Council’s decision means there will be a further delay in elections the military regime promised when it took over.

LEBANON: The death toll rose to nine today after three days of clashes between Palestinian factions at a refugee camp in Lebanon that have pitted members of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party against Islamist groups.

A Lebanese MP announced a ceasefire agreement today but some gunfire continued afterward.

Earlier efforts to broker a truce had failed to stop the shooting and shelling through the narrow streets of the Ein el-Hilweh camp in southern Lebanon.

EGYPT:  A shooting at a heavily fortified security facility in the restive part of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula killed at least four police, including a senior officer, on Sunday. 

At least 21 other officers were wounded in the shooting at the National Security headquarters in el-Arish, the capital of North Sinai province, security and health officials said.

DENMARK: Foreign Mnister Lars Lokke Rasmussen has said that the government will seek to make it illegal to desecrate the Koran or other holy books in front of foreign embassies.

In Sunday’s interview with Danish public broadcaster DR, he said that the burning of holy scriptures “only serves the purpose of creating division in a world that actually needs unity.”