Vatican Though he struggled with all his might, a suffering Pope John Paul II failed to voice a traditional Easter Sunday blessing for the first time in his 26-year pontificate, in a poignant appearance at his window overlooking a rain-dampened St Peter's Square. Lebanon Lebanon awoke to an Easter Sunday marred by another bomb blast in a Christian neighborhood that opposition figures charged was work of security services trying to foment sectarian unrest at a moment of high political tension. Kyrgyzstan The new leaders of Kyrgyzstan, brought to power by a lightning revolution in the Central Asian state, met with the head of Europe's leading security organisation as they struggled to end a parliamentary split that threatened a fragile return to calm. Monaco Hopes began to fade for Monaco's 81-year-old ruler Prince Rainier, as the palace said his condition was still deteriorating despite intensive care, with his heart, lungs and kidneys all failing. Japan French President Jacques Chirac said on a visit to Japan that China's desire for the European Union to lift its weapons embargo was "legitimate" and would not entail EU exports of sensitive weapons and technology to Beijing. Iraq Iraqi politicians fought over the oil ministry and the role of Islam in the next government, while an Al-Qaeda website posted a video of the purported execution of an Iraqi colonel. US Relatives of Terri Schiavo who have been fighting to prolong the life of the brain-damaged 41-year-old woman began to abandon their quest, but are now at odds with her husband as they favour an eventual Catholic burial while he wants his wife to be cremated. Egypt An Egyptian was jailed for 35 years by an emergency tribunal for spying for Iran and plotting to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in a sentence that cannot be appealed. Thailand At least 15 railway workers, soldiers and police were injured in two bomb blasts and an hour-long gun battle in Thailand's restive south, in an attack that police blamed on Islamic insurgents. North Korea Communist North Korea for the first time confirmed an outbreak of deadly bird flu at its poultry farms and said hundreds of thousands of chickens had been culled to contain it. Angola Angola anxiously awaited the arrival of foreign medical experts sent to check the spread of a killer virus, as the death toll from an outbreak of the Ebola-like Marburg virus rose to 120 and the epidemic spread to a new region.