German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Saturday Europe's new pact to tighten economic integration must be implemented quickly while Europe still faced a "long road" ahead to restore investor confidence.

"We are now called upon to implement quickly the fiscal pact, to implement it with determination... and not try to again soften it," she told reporters in the northern German city of Kiel.

Saudi Arabia has inked an $8.22 billion deal with a Spanish consortium to build a high-speed railway on the Muslim pilgrim route between Mecca and Medina, the state news agency SPA reported Saturday.

Spanish companies beat out French rivals in October for the contract to build the oil-rich kingdom's Haramain High Speed Rail Project (HHR).

A villager in provincial Russia has caused a national scandal after finding 79 Kalashnikov assault rifles in crates that he bought to use as firewood, Russian media reported on Friday.

A truck driver was supposed to take the crates for disposal from the factory in the central city of Izhevsk where Kalashnikovs are manufactured, but instead sold them to the unnamed villager, thinking they were empty.

Fans of Knut, the cuddly polar bear that captured hearts worldwide, will soon be able to visit a memorial at Berlin Zoo after the winning design for the shrine was unveiled Friday.

The winner, chosen from 40 entries, was "Knut The Dreamer" by sculptor Josef Tabachnyk, showing the snowy-white bear reclining lazily on rocks in his pen at Berlin Zoo, said the head of the Friends of the Capital Zoos, Thomas Ziolko.

Thieves spent six months digging a tunnel to steal money from an automatic teller machine -- but probably only got away with £6,000 ($9,200, 7,200 euros), British officials said Saturday.

The gang excavated the 30-meter long tunnel under a car park and part of a video shop in Manchester, northwest England, in order to raid the cash machine inside the building, police said.

Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah stressed on Saturday that United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon’s concern about his party’s arms gives him comfort and happiness, vowing that the party will grow stronger.

“I felt happy when I heard that he (Ban) said he was concerned about our military power,” Nasrallah said in a televised speech during the commemoration of the Arbaeen in Baalbek.

Pakistani security forces Saturday quelled a militant attack on a police station in which eight people were killed including four suicide bombers, one police and three civilians, police said.

The attackers targeted the main police station in Dera Ismail Khan city near the lawless tribal region, provincial information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain told Agence France Presse.

The ex-head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog and Nobel laureate Mohammed ElBaradei said on Saturday he would not run for the Egyptian presidency, saying there is still no real democracy in the country.

"My conscience does not allow me to run for the presidency or any other official position unless there is real democracy," ElBaradei said in a statement received by Agence France Presse.

A conference on democracy in the Arab world opens in Beirut on Sunday with U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon set to deliver the keynote address to a slew of dignitaries, many from countries that suffered under dictatorship.

"Current and former officials from a number of countries around the world will speak of their wonderful and rich experiences in their transition to democracy," said Maha Yahya, regional advisor for the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), which is organizing the meet.

Tunisia Saturday granted an amnesty or conditional release from prison to 9,000 detainees to mark the first anniversary of the fall of despot Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, officials said.

"On the occasion of the first anniversary of the Tunisian revolution the justice ministry has announced that 9,000 detainees will be pardoned or benefit from a conditional release," the justice ministry said in a statement.