The army deployed across much of Lebanon on Sunday after Hezbollah ceded control of west Beirut but clashes raged on in the north and in the Druze mountains as Arab foreign ministers held crisis talks. Heavy machine-gun fire and loud explosions echoed through a number of villages in the district of Aley as Druze majority leader Walid Jumblatt urged his rival Talal Arslan, who is allied with the Hezbollah-led opposition, to place the area under army control.

Scooter knocked Madonna off the top of the British album charts on Sunday with their new album going straight in at number one. The German techno band's first album since 2002, entitled "Jumping All Over The World", ended the US pop queen's reign atop both charts but she remained number one in the singles list with the track "4 Minutes" featuring Justin Timberlake.

The Los Angeles Lakers' 123-115 overtime loss to the Utah Jazz in the National Basketball Association playoffs left superstar Kobe Bryant with an aching back. The newly crowned league Most Valuable Player, Bryant is listed as day to day for game five in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

Aid groups said Sunday that supplies trickling into cyclone-hit Myanmar were far less than was needed, as the faltering relief effort suffered a new blow with the sinking of a Red Cross boat. The boat, carrying vital supplies of drinking water, rice , and purification tablets, hit a submerged tree trunk as it travelled by river through the disaster zone. Much of the aid was lost, but no one was injured.

A hacker broke into Chile's government sites mining data from six million people which he then posted on the Internet on two popular servers for several hours, the El Mercurio daily have said. The personal data included names, street and email addresses, telephone numbers, social and educational background, and was taken from Education Ministry, Electoral Service and state-run telephone companies' websites from late Saturday to early Sunday.