Headlines News

By Sayed Salahuddin KABUL (Reuters) - The Taliban kidnappers of 23 Korean hostages on Sunday extended the deadline for the South Korean government to agree to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan by 24 hours to 3:30 p.m. British time on Monday. The 23 hostages belong to the "Saemmul Church" in Bundang, a city outside South Korea's capital, Seoul. Most of them are in their 20s and 30s, and include  ...

A toddler has died after being found in a small stream near his family's Perthshire holiday home. The 22-month-old boy had earlier been reported missing by his parents from their log cabin in Kirkmichael, between Blairgowrie and Pitlochry. A helicopter and sniffer dogs were called in to search woodland around the area where the boy was last seen. He was found by the search team in a stretch of the nearby Tullochcurran Burn at about 1430 BST. The boy was taken by RAF helicopter to Ninewells  ...

Intensive efforts are under way to negotiate the release of 23 South Korean hostages being held by Taleban rebels in Afghanistan. Afghan troops have surrounded the area in central Ghazni province where the hostages are being held. South Korean envoys are in Kabul and an Afghan minister in Ghazni says he is optimistic the captives will be freed. Meanwhile police have found the body of a German man kidnapped a day earlier, but it is still not clear how he died. Troop withdrawal The BBC's Char ...

NOTRE-DAME-DE-MESAGE, France (Reuters) - Twenty-six Polish pilgrims died on Sunday when their coach crashed off a mountain road at a notorious accident blackspot in the French Alps and burst into flames, police and officials said. Another 24 people were injured, 14 critically, when the coach smashed through a roadside barrier on the steep Laffrey gradient, some 30 km (19 miles) from the southeaste ...

By Adam Entous JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Tony Blair begins his first visit to the region as Middle East envoy on Monday, hoping he can help turn around 60 years of peacemaking failures since Britain ended its mandate over Palestine. "Mission Impossible" is what the sceptics have, inevitably, already called the newly retired prime minister's mandate. He has been asked by the Quartet powers -- the Unit ...

The Bank of England's monetary policy committee (MPC) faces a balancing act, an influential forecast group says. On Monday, the Ernst & Young Item Club will say the strong housing market must be watched, but the MPC must not rush into "damaging" interest rate rises. It is predicting strong GDP growth of 2.9% in 2007 and 2.5% for 2008, and expects interest rates to rise further. But it warns the MPC must be forceful, but not "squeeze the economy too hard" so that it jeopardizes exports. 'Acte ...

Lewis Hamilton's championship lead was slashed as he failed to score points in a dramatic European Grand Prix won by his McLaren team-mate Fernando Alonso. The Spaniard took the lead from Felipe Massa's Ferrari with five laps left in a race defined by rain showers. Hamilton finished ninth and is now just two points ahead of the world champion, with Massa a further nine back. Mark Webber's Red Bull was third as Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen retired, dealing his title hopes a heavy blow. The Finn w ...

People who use internet networking sites are being warned that they could be at risk of identity theft. Credit information group Equifax said members of sites such as MySpace, Bebo and Facebook may be putting too many details about themselves online. It said fraudsters could use these details to steal someone's identity and apply for credit and benefits. Around 80,000 people in the UK were victims of identity theft last year, at a cost to the economy of £1.5bn. Passwords Neil Munroe, ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Actress Liz Dawn, who plays the feisty Vera Duckworth in the longest-running soap opera "Coronation Street", is to leave the show due to ill health, she told the News of the World in an interview on Sunday. Suffering from the chronic lung disease emphysema, Dawn will leave the ITV soap just before Christmas after a 34-year association with the programme, though she will continu ...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Britain's ambassador to Russia said London's relations with Moscow were not in crisis despite diplomatic tensions over Russia's refusal to extradite a suspect charged with killing emigre Alexander Litvinenko. "Talking of British-Russian relations, I would not use the word 'crisis'," Tony Brenton said in an interview with Russian news agency Interfax and Kommersant daily, publis ...