US A federal grand jury dramatically charged top White House aide I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby with lying to investigators in a CIA leak probe that has rocked President George W. Bush's administration. US Leaders of the opposition Democratic Party said that federal charges against a top White House aide reveal US President George W. Bush's administration had employed devious and dishonest tactics to make its case for going to war against Iraq. India As many as 40 people were feared killed when eight carriages of a passenger train derailed and toppled into floodwaters in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh early Saturday, police said. Mideast Israel launched fresh air strikes on the Gaza Strip after its defence minister dismissed the Palestinian leadership as a partner for peace and ruled out any foreseeable prospect of a Palestinian state. Iran The UN Security Council condemned Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statement that Israel should be wiped off the map, amid an international outcry over the comment. Iraq Iraqi parties put up their candidates for the December general elections, fielding a total of 400 lists, after each of three main Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish communities agreed on separate broad coalitions. Iraq A defence lawyer for ousted Iraq president Saddam Hussein wrote to UN chief Kofi Annan calling for the court trying him on charges of crimes against humanity to be moved to The Hague and its Iraqi judges replaced by foreign ones. Mideast The United States, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union called for Syria to immediately expel the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad from its territory. EU President Fidel Castro blasted EU nations as "hypocrites" after the European Parliament this week granted a group of wives, mothers and sisters of jailed Cuban dissidents, its top annual human rights prize, the Sakharov prize for freedom of thought. Health Romania has discovered another bird carrying the H5N1 strain of avian flu, potentially deadly to humans, as fears spread that the virus could spread to the vulnerable millions in Africa.