Chinese authorities said several homemade bombs exploded outside a provincial Communist Party office in northern China Wednesday, killing at least one person and injuring eight others.

William Ide reports.

Police in China’s northern Shanxi province said that shortly before 8:00 a.m. in the morning Wednesday, a series of homemade bombs went off in succession sending metal balls and other shrapnel flying.
 
Pictures of the damage posted online shortly after the incident showed multiple vehicles with minor damage, such as windows blown out.
 
The official Xinhua News Agency said that in addition to the steel balls, circuit boards were also found scattered around the scene of the explosions.  The agency says police believe improvised explosive devices or IEDs were used.

William Ide,Beijing.

An Egyptian court has upheld a ruling to ban the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and seize its assets.

The original ruling came last month amid a crackdown on the group that has landed most of its top leadership in custody, including ousted president Mohamed Morsi.

The Brotherhood appealed the case, but the Cairo Court for Urgent Matters ruled Wednesday the ban and asset seizure order will remain in place.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he wants peace with the Palestinians, and hopes visiting U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry can return negotiations to a place where a "historical" agreement can be achieved.

Mr Netanyahu spoke alongside Kerry as the two men opened a meeting in Jerusalem Wednesday morning.

Kerry, who is also meeting Wednesday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said there are always "difficulties" and "tensions" within negotiations, but that he is confident the parties can work through them.

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Former Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman is expected to return to his post, after a court acquitted him in a corruption trial.

Lieberman stepped down to face allegations that he appointed an ambassador in exchange for information about a police investigation into his own affairs. A court ruled Wednesday Lieberman was not guilty on all charges.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement congratulating Lieberman and welcoming his return to the government.

The top U.S. envoy to the United Nations says the government of embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is cooperating with a joint international mission inspecting chemical weapons sites in Syria.

But Ambassador Samantha Power, speaking late Tuesday, said Western analysts are still reviewing the Damascus government's recent chemical arms declaration with skepticism, and are checking its accuracy.

Syria submitted a lengthy list of its chemical weaponry late last month, and must soon agree with the inspections mission on how and where to destroy the stockpiles.

Philippine authorities are making preparations for what they are calling a "super typhoon" which is expected to slam into the central part of the country later this week.

Disaster officials have issued their highest alert level ahead of the arrival of Typhoon Haiyan, which already boasts wind gusts of up to 185 kilometers per hour.

The storm is expected to strengthen before making landfall on the central province of Leyte early Friday. It could also hit Bohol province, which is still recovering from last month's 7.2-magnitude earthquake.

The Palestinian commission investigating how late leader Yasser Arafat died says it has received test results from labs in Switzerland and Russia.

Those labs, and a third one in France, took samples from Arafat's remains last November after his body was exhumed to search for clues to his 2004 death.

The commission says the Swiss and Russian labs provided their results in the past few days, but experts will study them before making the information public.

Asia-Pacific stock markets closed down today.Japan up.Hongkong down.

I'm David Deforest.VOA News.More news on the internet at www.geilien.cn.