Aline Skaff, the Lebanese wife of Hannibal Gadhafi, is still in Libya and hasn’t attempted to flee the strife-torn country, her brother Danny told An Nahar newspaper.

“Aline last visited Beirut on New Year,” Danny Skaff said. “She comes to Lebanon at least twice or three times a year and spends around two months” here.

The March 14 alliance’s campaign against Hizbullah’s arms is expected to push for the quick formation of the new government, An Nahar newspaper reported Thursday.

The daily quoted Speaker Nabih Berri’s advisor MP Ali Hassan Khalil as saying that “the appropriate answer to the slogans launched by the March 14 team is to speed up the government formation process.”

The Dalai Lama announced Thursday his plan to retire as political head of the exiled Tibetan movement, saying the time had come for his replacement by a "freely elected" leader.

The Dalai Lama, whose more significant role is as the movement's spiritual leader, said he would seek an amendment allowing him to resign his political office when the exiled Tibetan parliament meets next week.

Nicolas Sarkozy will on Thursday meet envoys of Libya's rebel national council which is fighting to oust strongman Moammar Gadhafi, the French president's office said.

Sarkozy would meet Mahmoud Jibril and Ali Essaoui to discuss the "general situation in Libya, in particular the humanitarian situation and the actions of the national council," a statement said.

Hundreds of baton-wielding riot police barred Sudanese opposition activists from demonstrating on Wednesday, arresting dozens and beating up others, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported.

Some 500 riot police were deployed in Abu Janzeer square, in the center of the Sudanese capital Khartoum, after an alliance of opposition parties announced plans to hold a demonstration there at 1:00 pm (1000 GMT).

A Tunisian court ordered the former ruling RCD party to be dissolved Wednesday, consigning a key pillar of toppled president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's 23-year regime to the scrapheap.

The Rally for Constitutional Democracy (RCD) had already been suspended from official duties in February after Ben Ali fled on January 14 at the height of a popular uprising to overthrow his autocratic regime.

Saudi Arabia said Wednesday that a decision to support imposing a no-fly zone over Libya was up to the Arab League, not only Gulf countries.

"It is an issue that is the responsibility of the Arab League," Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told a press conference in the Red Sea city of Jeddah.

An explosion went off Wednesday at a bus stop close to the training center for Russia's FSB security service in Moscow, without causing casualties, the national anti-terror committee said.

"An explosive device went off at a bus stop at Michurinsky Avenue where the FSB academy is located," a committee spokesman told Agence France Presse.

World powers urged Iran to cooperate with the U.N. atomic watchdog Wednesday, otherwise it could soon face further censure for blocking the investigation into its controversial nuclear drive.

"We call on Iran to cooperate fully with the (International Atomic Energy) Agency," the so-called P5+1 grouping said in their first joint statement to the IAEA's board of governors in two years.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun stated on Wednesday that weapons possession outside the authority of the state is not “eternal.”

He made his statements after holding talks with outgoing Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir two hours before the Synod of Maronite Bishops’ retreat to elect his successor.