Gaza City /Tel Aviv - Top Israeli diplomats were heading for Washington and once again to Cairo to work out the details of a truce in Gaza, as fighting in the strip continued Friday and the Palestinian death toll topped 1,100.

As Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni left Thursday night for the US to sign an agreement on joint intelligence cooperation against weapons smuggling to Gaza, another senior official, Amos Gilad, was returning to Egypt where he had heard Hamas' position on an Egyptian ceasefire initiative on Thursday.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who spent the night in Jerusalem, was also due to travel to the nearby West Bank city of Ramallah for talks with Palestinian caretaker Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Manila - Eighteen people were killed in flashfloods and landslides caused by two weeks of heavy rains in the southern and eastern Philippines, the Office of Civil Defence (OCD) said Friday.

Eight fatalities were reported in the eastern provinces of Northern Samar, Catanduanes and Capiz, while 10 were killed in the southern province of Misamis Oriental and Agusan del Sur.

The victims drowned or were buried in landslides, the OCD said.

Nine people were still reported missing and feared dead in the affected provinces.

More than 314,000 people were adversely affected by the heavy rains in 13 eastern and southern provinces, where nearly 3,000 houses were damaged or destroyed, the OCD said.

Sydney - Flying Finn Jarkko Nieminen stunned Novak Djokovic on the eve of the Australian Open, hammering the top seed out of the Medibank International warm-up event 6-4, 7-6 (7-3) on Friday.

The 40th-ranked Niemimen, who secured a walkover the day before when 2008 Melbourne finalist Jo-Wilfried Tsonga withdrew from their quarter-final with a back injury, will face Argentine David Nalbandian for the title on Saturday.

Sao Paulo - Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, an optimist to the bone, keeps repeating his mantra that Brazil, the world's 10th largest economy, will emerge from the turbulence rattling the global economy with only minor scratches.

"We will do everything to achieve a 4-per-cent growth [of gross domestic product] in 2009," Lula says optimistically, not wasting a thought on recession.

New York, Jan. 16 : The Palestinian Authority''s representative to the UN said on Thursday during an emergency session of the General Assembly here that he intends to ask the Security Council to authorize an international military force to impose a cease-fire if Israel and Hamas cannot strike a deal to halt the fighting.

Accusing Israel of war crimes, Riyad Mansour warned that the war in Gaza could destabilize the entire region and thwart efforts to reach a comprehensive two-state peace settlement if it did not end soon.

New Delhi, Jan 16 : Union Minister of Human Resource Development Arjun Singh will be the chief guest at the XIth Convocation of the University of Hyderabad to be held tomorrow.

The last convocation was held in 2007.

With student strength of more than 3,400 the University of Hyderabad has emerged as a top-ranking institute of higher education and research in India.

Union Ministry of Science and Technology has recognized this University as the Second Ranking University in the country.