World News

TEHRAN, Iran - One of the 15 British service members held captive in Iran appeared Friday on the government's Arabic-language TV and apologized for entering Iranian waters "without permission."

The following is the text of an Iranian Foreign Ministry letter handed to the British ambassador in Tehran, according to IRNA, Iran's state news agency.

LONDON - Britain said it was giving "serious consideration" to a proposal from Iran for freeing 15 British navy personnel and ending the week-old crisis over their capture without a "confrontation."

JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert hailed a peace drive by Arab states as marking a "revolutionary change" but flatly rejected its demand to let Palestinian refugees return to Israel's borders, newspapers reported on Friday.

BAGHDAD - The U.S. military announced the capture Friday of a suspected militant linked to the import into Iraq of sophisticated roadside bombs that the Americans have asserted are coming from Iran.

TEHRAN, Iran - One of the 15 British service members held captive in Iran appeared Friday on the government's Arabic-language TV and apologized for entering Iranian waters "without permission."

LONDON (AFP) - The government branded as "outrageous" propaganda the broadcast Friday of new video footage of its naval personnel detained in Iran.

The following is the text of an Iranian Foreign Ministry letter handed to the British ambassador in Tehran, according to IRNA, Iran's state news agency.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Retail group TJX, which owns the TKMaxx retail outlets, has disclosed that some 45.6 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen by hackers in 2005 and 2006, along with other potentially sensitive customer information.

LONDON (AFP) - London shares slid in late Friday morning trading losing 0.30 percent to 6,305.40 points.

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - The prosecution will seek a sentence of "substantially less" than 20 years for Australian David Hicks, a Guantanamo detainee who pleaded guilty to a terrorism-related charge this week, the chief prosecutor for the military tribunals said Thursday.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Brazil's government said it will provide free Internet access to native Indian tribes in the Amazon in an effort to help protect the world's biggest rain forest.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Twenty-five years after hostilities ceased, Argentina is opening a new front in the Falklands War.

SANTIAGO, Chile - Police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse hundreds of rock-throwing high school students who repeatedly blocked traffic on Santiago's main avenue on Thursday.

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - The surprise guilty plea by terror suspect David Hicks has left the military scrambling to fly in a panel of officers to determine a sentence — and a pack of journalists scratching for scraps of information amid a virtual news blackout.

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe was to lead his party on Friday in endorsing 2008 elections which will likely see the 83-year-old leader stand for another term after regional leaders backed his hardline rule.

BAHIR DAR, Ethiopia (Reuters) - Thirty-year-old Alem wears two small bags of perfumed soap around her neck to mask the stench of urine and faeces that has accompanied her for 10 years since she suffered a fistula.

GENEVA - The U.N. Human Rights Council adopted a resolution expressing its concern about the situation in Darfur on Friday, but stopped short of criticizing Sudan's government over the atrocities.

MOGADISHU, Somalia - An Ethiopian helicopter attacking insurgent positions in Somalia's capital was shot down Friday as government and allied troops battled hundreds of gunmen in the streets, witnesses said.

KHARTOUM, Sudan - Authorities arrested a man armed with a knife who hijacked a Sudan Airways plane Friday while flying from Libya to Sudan, police said.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) - Local Taliban militants seeking to impose Islamic law blew up two video shops and torched a cable television operator's office in northwestern Pakistan, officials said Friday.

DHAKA (AFP) - Bangladesh authorities executed six Islamic militant leaders Friday accused of killing two judges and masterminding a wave of deadly bombings, and stepped up security to prevent revenge attacks.

TOKYO (AFP) - Japan on Friday reported the first fall in consumer prices for 10 months as it struggles to defeat its decade-old deflation scourge, clouding prospects for another interest rate rise.

LONDON (AFP) - British finance minister Gordon Brown and Defence Secretary Des Browne arrived in Afghanistan on Friday on a surprise visit to British troops, the Ministry of Defence said.

COLOMBO (AFP) - At least five Sri Lankan soldiers were killed Friday in a powerful roadside explosion in the country's north, while eight civilians died elsewhere in clashes, officials said.

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's minority Conservative government is unhappy that opposition parliamentarians have totally rewritten its draft clean air legislation and will now consider what to do with the bill, Environment Minister John Baird said on Thursday.

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada launched an investigation on Thursday into allegations of fraud and gross mismanagement by those running the pension and insurance funds of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

OTTAWA (Reuters) - The number of young harp seals that Canadian hunters can kill off the east coast this year will be cut by a quarter, mainly because of poor ice conditions where the animals give birth, officials said on Thursday.

TORONTO (Reuters) - The Canadian housing market remained robust during the first quarter of 2007 in all major markets, but Alberta continues to fuel prices at a much faster rate, according to Royal LePage Real Estate Services' latest figures on Thursday.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - The labor walkout that disrupted Canada National Railway Co. and drew threats of government intervention could resume immediately if workers reject the proposed new contract, according to a union letter released on Thursday.

DILI, East Timor - Gangs from rival political parties scuffled and threw rocks in East Timor, injuring at least 20 people, authorities said Friday, in what was believed to be the first violence directly related to next month's presidential elections.

DILI (AFP) - Indonesia reopened its border with East Timor on Thursday because the fugitive rebel who caused its closure is no longer considered a threat, an official said.

CANBERRA, Australia - The government would be powerless to reduce any sentence served in an Australian prison by a Guantanamo Bay detainee who this week admitted to aiding al-Qaida, the attorney general said Thursday.

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia will have no power to shorten any prison sentence for Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks under a new prisoner-exchange deal with the United States, the country's top lawmaker said on Thursday.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) - Buildings were washed away, homes flooded and scores of buses and cars trapped by raging flood waters in northern New Zealand Thursday after the equivalent of three months of rainfall poured down in just 36 hours, local officials said.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark - A wristwatch buried in the ice at the North Pole three years ago was found by a boy more than 1,800 miles away after it floated ashore on the Faeroe Islands.

BAGHDAD - Five suicide bombers struck Shiite marketplaces in northeast Baghdad and a town north of the capital at nightfall Thursday, killing at least 125 people and wounding more than 150 in one of Iraq's deadliest days in years.

LONDON - Britain said it was giving "serious consideration" to a proposal from Iran for freeing 15 British navy personnel and ending the week-old crisis over their capture without a "confrontation."

LONDON (AFP) - "The Teletubbies," the television show for infants that became a worldwide hit, celebrate its 10th birthday on Friday.

TEHRAN, Iran - One of the 15 British service members held captive in Iran appeared Friday on the government's Arabic-language TV and apologized for entering Iranian waters "without permission."