San Francisco  - California is facing its "worst drought ever" after an extremely dry January left the crucial Sierra Nevada snowpack well below normal levels for the third year running, state officials said Friday.

"We may be at the start of the worst California drought in modern history," Lester Snow, director of the state Department of Water Resources, said in a statement. "It's imperative for Californians to conserve water immediately at home and in their businesses."

Nairobi/Abuja  - The main militant group in Nigeria's oil- producing Niger Delta region Friday called off a long-term ceasefire, citing an attack on one of its camps.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), which in September declared a ceasefire after a week of attacks platforms, pipelines and oil flow-stations owned by Chevron, Shell and Agip, said it would resume hostilities.

Beirut  - An Iranian aid ship carrying medical supplies for Gaza has arrived in Beirut after its organizers said Friday it was denied entry by Egypt.

Ghazanfar Rokn-Abadi, spokesman for the Gaza Reconstruction Committee of Iran, said: "The ship was forced to change course after Egypt denied it entry."

"We waited 24 hours and then decided to head for Lebanon," the spokesman was quoted by Lebanese radios as saying. The Iran Shahed arrived in Beirut, late Thursday.

Sanaa  - Yemeni security forces arrested three suspects, including A Kuwaiti national, in a crackdown on militant groups linked to terror acts, official sources said Friday.

The Interior Ministry said in a brief statement that the three suspects, aged between 20 and 25, were captured in the north-central province of Marib.

The two-line statement said one of the suspects was an Arab man, without giving further details. A Defence Ministry online newspaper said the non-Yemeni suspect was a Kuwaiti national.

Washington - Winter poured a lethal mixture of ice, rain and snow across much of the East Coast and as far west as Oklahoma and Texas Wednesday, causing at least a dozen traffic-related deaths, leaving hundreds of thousands of households without power and tying traffic in chilly knots.

The weather front started moving east Tuesday evening whiel still spreading misery across Oklahoma, Arkansas and Kentucky, mixing warmer moist Gulf air with Arctic cold.

Vatican City  - Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday, moving to quell outrage over a recently reinstated bishop's remarks denying the Nazi mass murder of the Jews, reiterated the Roman Catholic Church's "solidarity" with the Jewish people.

Benedict during his weekly general audience said the memory of the Holocaust (or Shoah) cannot be cancelled through any form of denial.