The United States army has submitted a request to establish a “huge” telecommunications station in Lebanon, reported As Safir newspaper on Saturday.

Official sources told the daily that the U.S. army made the request to the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority through the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon.

Hugo Chavez's first words after emerging from surgery were "How are my (Venezuelan) people?" according to officials, who proclaimed here Friday that the ailing leader is on the road to recovery.

Venezuela's Information Minister Ernesto Villegas told reporters that Chavez spoke with family members immediately after an operation to control bleeding after his cancer surgery earlier this week, and that his recovery was proceeding "satisfactorily."

The residents of the Wadi Khaled town of al-Boqaiaa have fled their homes on Friday as a result of heavy shooting coming from the Syrian side, the National News Agency reported.

"Gunfire from light- and medium-caliber weapons and shells coming from Syria have landed in al-Boqaiaa area of Wadi Khaled near the Lebanese side of the Grand River,” the NNA said.

German prosecutors said on Friday they believed Islamist extremists were behind a botched bomb attack at Bonn train station.

The federal prosecutor said in a statement that there was enough evidence to suggest Monday's incident was "an attempted explosives' attack by a terrorist organization with a radical Islamist bent".

Stone-throwing clashes broke out Friday in the Egyptian city of Alexandria between Islamists and opposition protesters, on the eve of a highly charged referendum on a new constitution, witnesses and state media said.

Fifteen people were wounded, according to medics, and several cars set on fire in the violence in the Mediterranean city, Egypt's second largest.

Russia on Friday condemned U.S. sanctions against officials implicated in the death of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky as "dangerous" meddling and hit back with moves for a bill of its own blacklisting American citizens.

The bill, which grants normal trade relations with Russia but also includes a blacklist of alleged human rights abusers, had angered Russian President Vladimir Putin and was signed into law Friday by President Barack Obama.

A heavily armed young gunman slaughtered 20 small children and six adults at a school in an idyllic Connecticut town on Friday, in one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history.

Connecticut State Police spokesman Lieutenant Paul Vance said 18 children were shot dead inside Sandy Hook Elementary School and that two more died of their wounds in hospital.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns called on Friday for long-term solutions to fight terrorism, a phenomenon he said posed "serious threats" in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa.

"Our goal now is to put into place long-term solutions," Burns said at a meeting of the Global Counterterrorism Forum in Abu Dhabi.

The Syndicate Coordination Committee announced on Friday that it will hold a nation-wide general strike coinciding with the cabinet's first meeting after the holidays.

"Public administrations, ministries, the Grand Serail as well as public and private schools and vocational institutes, they will all participate in the strike,” said the statement released after the SCC's meeting at the headquarters of the Secondary School Education Teachers Association.

Thousands of Syrians took to the streets on Friday, criticizing Washington for blacklisting the rebel jihadist group Al-Nusra Front, as regime troops bombed southern districts of Damascus and clashes were reported around two military schools in the north of the country.

The protesters demonstrated under the slogan: "There is no terrorism in Syria except that of Assad."