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LAGOS (Reuters) - A U.S. oil worker held hostage in Nigeria is seriously ill and if he dies his kidnappers will kill the other three men in their custody, one of the kidnappers told Reuters in a telephone call on Thursday. The hostages each spoke of the deteriorating conditions in the humid, mosquito-plagued Niger Delta on their ninth day in captivity and passed the telephone to a man who identif ...

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - A Slovak AN-24 military aircraft, bound from Kosovo to Slovakia with Slovak peacekeeping troops on board, crashed in east Hungary on Thursday, the Hungarian government said. Rescuers found one survivor and a number of corpses at the heavily forested, mountainous crash site. "This aircraft was an AN-24 military aircraft flying from Pristina to Kosice in Slovakia and it crashe ...

LAGOS (Reuters) - A U.S. oil worker being held hostage in Nigeria is seriously ill and if he dies his kidnappers will kill the other three men in their custody, the kidnappers told Reuters in a telephone call on Thursday. A man who identified himself as the ground commander of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta reiterated a call for two ethnic Ijaw leaders to be released and for ...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- At least 15 people were killed and 46 wounded Thursday when a car bomb and a suicide bomber almost simultaneously struck a busy commercial district in central Baghdad, an official with Baghdad emergency police said. The car bomb, which targeted an Iraqi police patrol, exploded first on Sadoon Street, followed almost immediately by an explosion in a crowded coffee shop when a bomber blew himself up, the official said. At least three Iraqi police officers were among the de ...

BETHESDA, Maryland (CNN) -- Within a minute of meeting Mary Beth Carroll you know she has a strength about her. Even in this horribly difficult situation, Mary Beth doesn't crack -- focusing on the points she wants to emphasize about her daughter Jill, the 28-year-old journalist abducted in Iraq. As we prepare to begin under the hot and bright lights, she is calm, reading through a statement that's been printed in a large font and double-spaced so she can look into the camera and talk directly ...

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The world's first mission to Pluto blasted into space on Thursday on an unmanned Atlas 5 rocket to begin a 9 1/2-year journey to the only unexplored planet in the solar system. After two days of delays due to poor weather and a power outage, the 197-foot-tall (60-metre-tall) rocket, built by Lockheed Martin Corp., lifted off at 2 p.m. (7 p.m. British time) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The launch team remained on edge until 45 minute ...

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - A Slovak AN-24 military aircraft, bound from Kosovo to Slovakia, crashed in eastern Hungary on Thursday, a Hungarian government spokesman said. "This aircraft was an AN-24 military aircraft flying from Pristina to Kosice in Slovakia and it crashed in Telkibanya, near the Slovak border around 2030 (7:30 p.m. British time)," Miklos Merenyi, a spokesman for Hungary's Economy Min ...

By Yara Bayoumy DUBAI (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden warned that al Qaeda was preparing new attacks in the United States but said the group was open to a conditional truce with Americans, according to an audio tape attributed to him on Thursday. It was the first purported tape by bin Laden since 2004. Al Jazeera television, which aired the tape, said it was dated to the Muslim lunar month which corresponds to January. The TV station said earlier the tape dated from December. "The operations are  ...

By Paul Eckert WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Thursday demanded that the U.N. Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions, promptly confront Iran over its nuclear ambitions, while Russia and China urged caution. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Syria in a signal to the world that the two regional allies, each facing threats of referral to the council, will not be cowed. "We have been very clear that the time has come for a referral of Iran to the Securi ...

(CNN) -- NASA's New Horizons spacecraft roared into space Thursday afternoon bound for the planet Pluto. The spacecraft is the fastest ever launched, according to NASA. New Horizons lifted off atop a Lockheed Martin Atlas V rocket at 2:00 p.m. ET from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida to begin a 10-year, 3-billion-mile mission. "New Horizons spacecraft is on its way to the very edge of our solar system," said Atlas control. Thursday's launch comes after two scrubbed attempts ear ...