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BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) - A British military helicopter that crashed in the Iraqi city of Basra on Saturday was hit by a missile, a military spokeswoman in Basra said.

Singer Annie Lennox is to receive a prestigious US award for her contribution to music. Lennox, 51, will get a Founders Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). It is awarded to songwriters who have made exceptional contributions to music and influenced their peers. Lennox enjoyed huge success during the 1980s in the Eurythmics, with Dave Stewart, and more recently as a solo performer and songwriter. Solo career ASCAP president and chairman Marilyn Bergm ...

BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) - Four bodies were seen inside a British helicopter that crashed in the Iraqi city of Basra on Saturday, firefighters said. It was not immediately clear what caused the helicopter to go down but one policeman at the scene in central Basra told Reuters the aircraft had been fired on. The British military could not confirm the crash but said an incident had happened.

The departure of Jack Straw from the Foreign Office has come as a considerable surprise. It is going to be an uncertain time for the presentation of British foreign policy. Mr Straw's successor, Margaret Beckett - incidentally Britain's first woman Foreign Secretary - will be immediately thrown into a growing crisis with Iran. She is due to join a dinner meeting of other foreign ministers in New York on Monday evening at which Iran and its nuclear programme is to be discussed. The others the ...

Five Chinese Muslim men have been released from the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay and flown to Albania for resettlement, the US says. US officials had concluded the ethnic Uighers represented no danger but did not want to return them to China for fear they would face persecution. Uighurs are seeking a homeland in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang. The US state department called Albania's offer to resettle the men, "an important humanitarian gesture". The five men were among  ...

The widow of the former MP for Blaenau Gwent, Peter Law, has insisted he was offered a peerage by Labour. In a newspaper article, Trish Law says the party tried to get him not to stand against them as an independent at the last general election. The Labour Party has strongly denied the claim. Mr Law died last month after suffering from a brain tumour, first diagnosed during the election campaign. His funeral was held on Thursday. Mr Law battled ill-health to stand as an independent and ta ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Crew members put out a fire in the engine room of a cruise liner with 708 people aboard off the coast of southeast England early on Saturday, a British coastguard official said. "They smothered the engine room with CO2, which is normal procedure, and they have managed to extinguish the fire," said the official in the port of Dover, where the coastguard is coordinating the rescu ...

Corrects sentence in paragraph eight to read ... St Peter Port in Guernsey ... instead of ... St Peterport in the Scilly Isles. LONDON (Reuters) - Crew members put out a fire in the engine room of a cruise liner with 708 people aboard off the coast of southeast England early on Saturday, a British coastguard official said. "They smothered the engine room with CO2, which is normal procedure, and ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Tony Blair's overhaul of his ministerial team after a local election rout has been blasted by the media and even some of his own MPs, with special ire directed at his deputy John Prescott. Reshuffling the cabinet had been seen by analysts as Blair's bid to reassert his authority and signal he has no plans to step down just yet, but there were reports backbenchers were ready to sign a letter demanding Blair set a timetable for his departure. The reshuffle saw o ...

Ten soldiers were killed when a US helicopter crashed in Afghanistan late on Friday night, officials from the US-led coalition have said. The CH-47 Chinook came down in Kunar province near a "mountaintop landing zone" 240km (150 miles) east of Kabul. The nationalities of the soldiers have not yet been released. The soldiers were reportedly involved in operations against the Taleban, although military officials said the crash was not caused by enemy fire. No survivors The crash happened nea ...