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KANDAHAR, Afghanistan: A desperate hunt was under way Saturday for more than 1,100 prisoners who escaped a jail in southern Afghanistan when Taliban rebels blasted it open, killing 15 guards, officials said. The Taliban said 400 of its own fighters escaped when the rebels attacked the facility here late Friday, blasting it open with suicide bombs before shooting the guards. They spent two months planning the raid, which Deputy Justice Minister Mohammad Qasim Hashimzai said was their most sophisticated yet. None of the escaped inmates has yet been caught, he added.
-- AFP
BOGOTA: A member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia has agreed to free Ingrid Betancourt and other hostages in exchange for protection from extradition, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe announced Friday. His government has accepted the rebel initiative. High-profile hostage Betancourt is a French-Colombian citizen who was kidnapped in 2002 while campaigning for the Colombian presidency. The government says the rebels currently hold some 700 hostages, including three US military contractors kidnapped in 2003.
-- Xinhua
OSAKA: The International Monetary Fund said Saturday it would investigate the surge in crude oil costs after the G8 club of rich nations called for a probe into wild swings in energy prices. The fund's chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said tight demand and supply conditions were the key reasons for soaring oil prices, which are up fivefold since 2003, but added that may not be thought to explain the entire surge.
-- AFP
TOKYO: China on Saturday confirmed that President Hu Jintao will take part in an extended summit here next month of the Group of Eight, or G8, major industrial nations, a Japanese official said. Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, in Tokyo for talks with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts, confirmed to Japan for the first time that Hu would attend, a Japanese foreign ministry official said. The Group of Eight-Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States-will hold their annual summit on July 7 to 9 in the northern Japanese resort of Toyako.
-- AFP
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: The US shuttle Discovery was to return to Earth Saturday after a successful mission to deliver and open Japan's first space laboratory at the International Space Station. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration gave the shuttle the green light to wrap up its 15-day journey after it determined that the loss of a small clip from its rudder speed break posed no risk during landing, which is scheduled for 11:15 a.m. The V-shaped thermal barrier clip, measuring 6.5 centimeters-by-2.5 centimeters, is only needed during the shuttle's ascent, the US space agency said.
-- AFP
WASHINGTON: Former NBC TV host Tim Russert, who has acquainted Americans for his prominent weekly program, Meet the Press, died of an apparent heart attack on Friday. The NBC's Washington Bureau chief collapsed at work and was immediately taken to the Washington's Sibley Memorial Hospital, where he died at 58, the hospital confirmed. At hearing the news, President George W. Bush sent condolence from Italy to Russert's family, saying he was a tough and hardworking newsman.
-- Xinhua
TEHRAN: Iran's response to an offer from world powers over its nuclear program depends on the West showing a "logical" response to a package Tehran put forward last month, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Saturday. European Union Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana on Saturday presented a new offer to Iran on ending the six-year standoff over its nuclear drive, offering Tehran economic and trade incentives.
-- AFP
PARIS: US President George W. Bush and French President Nicolas Sarkozy held talks Saturday expected to focus on their common hard line on Iran, cooperation on Afghanistan and France's outreach to Syria. Bush, here on a legacy-shaping farewell trip to Europe, and Sarkozy met at the Elysee Palace as a top European envoy offered Tehran's defiant leaders a new incentives package to freeze their suspect nuclear drive.
-- AFP
LONDON: Ireland received widespread support for its rejection of a key European Union reform treaty among European newspapers Saturday, but others feared it portends a crisis that could lead to the bloc's collapse. The Times in London hailed the Irish "no" vote on the Lisbon Treaty as a victory against "a process hitherto shrouded in jargon and pushed along by the civil servants who invented it." It said the "no" vote-with 53.4 percent-was in Ireland's own interest, because approval would have meant a dilution of its influence under the proposed changes to majority voting in the enlarged bloc.
-- AFP
BEIJING: China's president and prime minister on Saturday sent messages of condolence to Japan over a deadly earthquake that struck the north of the country, state media said. "Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao sent messages to Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, offering their sincere sympathies to the victims," the state Xinhua News Agency said. The earthquake, which measured 7.2 on the Richter scale, killed three people, injured more than 100 more and trapped guests at a hot-spring resort buried by a landslide.
-- AFP
YANGON: Eleven people have been killed in landslides caused by heavy rains that pounded Myanmar's famed "valley of rubies," source of some of the world's finest gems, state media said Saturday. "The floodwater rose from two to three feet and caused landslides that destroyed three houses, leaving seven men and four women dead," the official New Light of Myanmar newspaper said.
-- AFP
WASHINGTON: Concerned that skyrocketing oil prices might induce a worldwide economic slump, Saudi Arabia is planning to increase oil production next month by about a half-million barrels a day, The New York Times reported on its website late Friday. Citing unnamed analysts and oil traders who have been briefed by Saudi officials, the newspaper said the increase could bring Saudi output to a production level of 10 million barrels a day. The move is seen as a sign that the Saudis are becoming increasingly nervous about both the political and economic effect of high oil prices, the report said.
-- AFP
WASHINGTON: New observations from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration 's Phoenix Mars Lander provided the most magnified view ever seen of Martian soil, showing particles clumping together even at the smallest visible scale, the mission science team reported on Friday. In the past two days, two instruments on the lander deck-a microscope and a bake-and-sniff analyzer-have begun inspecting soil samples delivered by the scoop on Phoenix's Robotic Arm. Images from Phoenix's Optical Microscope showed nearly 1,000 separate soil particles, down to size smaller than one-tenth the diameter of a human hair. At least four distinct minerals are seen, the team said.
-- Xinhua
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