Reuters - A microphone picked up an unaware U.S. President George W. Bush saying on Monday Syria should press Hizbollah to "stop doing this shit" and that his secretary of state may go to the Middle East soon.

AP - Developments in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

AP - A senior European Union official returned Monday from the Middle East and said he is pessimistic about the chance of a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah militants.

Reuters - U.S. shares were set to fall on Monday as escalating violence in the Middle East pushed oil toward $78 a barrel, adding to investors' worries about the health of the U.S. economy and prospects for interest rates.

AP - Hundreds of exhausted evacuees flew into Cyprus Sunday as Western countries moved their citizens from the Middle East amid continued Israeli bombardment of Lebanon.

AFP - US Middle East envoy David Welch held talks with Libyan officials on strengthening economic and financial ties between the two countries, officials said.

AP - Global institutions often seem powerless to solve world problems. Yet framers of a multinational statement urging restraint in the Middle East are counting on hope over history.

AFP - Prime Minister Tony Blair has said there was an "arc of extremism" across the Middle East and the world would rue the consequences of failing to resolve the burning issues there.

As the tension in the Middle East continues to worsen over the weekend with fresh violence in a Hezbollah rocket attack over the Israeli city of Haifa, European leaders at the G8 summit in Russia have condemned the hostility. Over the weekend, the G8 leaders were under intense pressure to try and...

AP - World leaders expressed confidence Sunday they would emerge from an economic summit overshadowed by violence in the Middle East with a consensus position calling for peace — despite differing views on who shares the blame.

AFP - The head of a cross-party parliamentary group on Arab issues has urged Prime Minister Tony Blair to replace his Middle East envoy whom police arrested and questioned this week as part of a cash-for-honours investigation.

AFP - Prime Minister Tony Blair has arrived for a Group of Eight (G8) summit determined to see the leaders of the world's most powerful nations set out an agenda for defusing the crisis in the Middle East.

AP - World leaders, tearing up a carefully prepared agenda for their annual summit, turned their attention to a growing crisis in the Middle East that has highlighted the differences between President Bush and major U.S. allies.

AP - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Friday that American support of Israel is responsible for flaming tensions in the Middle East.

AFP - The Non-Aligned Movement has condemned as "disproport­ionate" Israel's military offensive in Gaza and called for the revival of the stalled Middle East roadmap peace plan.

AP - Ehud Olmert's effort to free three captured soldiers has become a broad campaign to alter the strategic balance of the Middle East — an enormous gamble for an Israeli prime minister facing growing domestic pressure to hit Islamic militants hard.

AFP - Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi took a brief break from his first tour of the crisis-hit Middle East to visit the ancient Jordanian city of Petra.

AFP - Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi unveiled more than 16 million dollars in fresh aid to Jordan as part of its effort to support the crisis-hit Middle East.

AFP - On the eve of the G8 summit in Russia, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has appealed for a concerted international push to defuse the crisis in the Middle East before it tumbles into all-out war.

AP - Japan insisted on a U.N. Security Council resolution threatening sanctions against North Korea for its recent missile tests as diplomats scrambled to unify competing proposals.