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BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A spate of bombings and shootings across Iraq killed at least eight Iraqis on Saturday, and Britain announced the death of a British security worker in a roadside blast. The violence came a day after the announcement of uncertified final results from the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections, a step U.S. officials and many Iraqis hoped could help curb a rampant insurgency. British security company contractor Stephen Enwright, 30, was killed Thursday in a roadside bomb in Iraq, The British Foreign Office said Saturday. The precise location of the attack was not provided. A roadside bomb blast...

"The rescue was a rare slice of good fortune in Iraq, where yesterday Rizgar Amin, chief judge in the trial of Saddam Hussein, quit in protest at pressure from the Iraqi government on his court, which has already seen two defence lawyers murdered and witnesses threatened."

A British man kidnapped in Iraq and held for five days by armed men who threatened to behead him was rescued last week by American special forces and astonished to discover that no one had noticed he was missing.

Briton sits out racism tribute By Harry Mount in New York (Filed: 03/12/2005) A British woman has outraged New Yorkers by refusing to give up a bus seat set aside to honour the civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks. Fiona Humphreys, 55, from Bristol, was told she was sitting in a symbolic seat kept empty in honour of the 50th anniversary of the day Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man in Alabama. Mrs Parks's refusal to budge on Dec 1, 1955, helped spark the civil rights movement in America. But Mrs Humphreys, travelling up Fifth...

The Sunday Times November 27, 2005 Interview: Paul Flynn meets Elton John and David Furnish Now we are (nearly) married Welcome to planet Elton. We are half a dozen blocks from Central Park in New York. An entire floor of the rococo hotel that doubles as the John- Furnish Manhattan pied-à-terre when they’re in town has been commandeered for business. Arthur, their cocker spaniel, is at the beauty parlour (he’s in the park four times a day so he gets quite mucky, offers Elton). Later they’re off shopping with their New York buddy Jake Shears of the Scissor Sisters,...

LONDON (AP) -- Aaron Balick expected to find a tiny mouse rustling behind the TV in his apartment. Instead, he found a venomous giant centipede that somehow hitched a ride from South America to Britain. "Thinking it was a mouse, I went to investigate the sound. The sound was coming from under some papers which I lifted, expecting to see the mouse scamper away," the 32-year-old psychotherapist said Wednesday. "Instead, when I lifted the papers, I saw this prehistoric looking animal skitter away behind a stack of books." He trapped the 9-inch-long creature between a stack of books and put...

A suspected Islamic militant accused of trying to set up a terrorist training camp in the United States appeared in a British court Monday, and his lawyer said the man was innocent and would fight an American extradition request.

Tom Hurndall died nine months after falling into a coma A former Israeli soldier has been found guilty of the manslaughter of British student Tom Hurndall in the Gaza Strip. Ex-sergeant Taysir Hayb was convicted at a military court in Ashkelon for the shooting of Mr Hurndall in April 2003. Mr Hurndall, 22, was involved in protests against the Israeli military in the Palestinian town of Rafah. He died nine months after the shooting. His father, Anthony, welcomed the guilty verdict, but he said the Israeli army acted with impunity too often. The defendant was led out of the court...

A crisis in the European Union sparked by French and Dutch voters' rejections of the EU's constitution worsened when France and Germany ganged up on Britain ahead of an important summit next week meant to reorganise the bloc's budget for 2007-2013. French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, meeting together in Paris, told a joint news conference they wanted Britain to give up a hard-won five-billion-euro (six-billion-dollar) annual rebate it gets from the EU budget -- something British Prime Minister Tony Blair has bluntly and repeatedly ruled out. "Above all our British friends must recognise how things have...

Russia backs UNSC talks on N. Korea 05/02/2005 By NOBUYOSHI SAKAJIRI, The Asahi Shimbun WASHINGTON-Moscow will go along with Washington in calling for the U.N. Security Council to take up the issue of sanctions against North Korea if Pyongyang does not return to the six-party talks on its nuclear ambitions, diplomatic sources said. Four of the five permanent Security Council members-Russia, Britain, France and the United States-have now said they support a Security Council discussion of the issue, a senior official with the Bush administration said. China is the only holdout. The United States plans to urge China to either...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A British engineer has collected a $10,000 (5,200 pounds) bounty for turning in his near-mint copy of a famous forty-year-old electronics magazine, but not before irking university librarians who rushed to secure their copies from thieves. Intel this month posted a reward for a copy of the April 1965 issue of Electronics, in which company co-founder Gordon Moore accurately forecast years of exponential improvements in computer chip performance. Later dubbed Moore's Law, the forecast has become gospel for $200 billion chip industry. News of the reward reached Surrey, England, where an engineer named David Clark found...

WASHINGTON - A British man whose behavior raised suspicions at a flight school in Georgia has been located in England, an FBI official said Friday. Zayead Christopher Hajaig, 35, was taking lessons at the same airport in suburban Atlanta where two of the Sept. 11 hijackers briefly trained, the official said on condition of anonymity because the matter is still under investigation. The Atlanta Joint Terrorism Task Force issued a special bulletin to law enforcement and flight schools this week after it received reports from the school that Hajaig became hostile while trying to upgrade his pilot's license, according to...

20 hurt as frenzied mob fights over £49 sofas on opening night Britain's biggest Ikea store opened at midnight yesterday — but closed just 40 minutes later as 6,000 frenzied shoppers stampeded for bargains, leaving 20 in need of hospital treatment. One woman was said to have been threatened by a man with a mallet, and another waiting in the checkout queue was "mugged" for her cut-price sofa. Security guards were reported to have fled the scene. Police were called and a fleet of nine ambulances ferried people to hospital with heat exhaustion and crush injuries. A huge crowd had...

A British computer specialist has been indicted formally in the US on charges that he used websites to recruit and finance Taliban fighters. Babar Ahmad, 30, was arrested in London in August and has been held in the UK pending the outcome of extradition proceedings. Ahmad allegedly ran the site azzam.com, which investigators say was used to funnel money to terrorists. "Azzam Publications has been set up to propagate the call for jihad ... to incite the believers and also, secondly, to raise some money for the brothers," the website allegedly said. Donors were encouraged to smuggle cash into Pakistan...

UK rules out Bigley hostage deal Ken Bigley was shown sobbing behind bars Downing Street has stressed that the government's position on no negotiating with terrorists remains unchanged. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said: "We have a policy... we don't negotiate with hostage takers." But Tony Blair said the government would respond immediately to any contact from the kidnappers holding Ken Bigley in Iraq. Both were commenting after the release of a video showing Mr Bigley caged, and again pleading for help. Blair 'sickened' "Tony Blair is lying. He doesn't care about me," Mr Bigley, 62, said in the video appeal...

'When people see a strong horse and a weak horse," Osama bin Laden said after the destruction of the World Trade Center, "by nature they will like the weak horse." No maxim has better encapsulated the merciless philosophy of al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups around the world. In the past week, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist believed to have captured the Liverpudlian engineer Kenneth Bigley and two Americans 10 days ago, has shown that this principle remains at the heart of what he and his fellow fanatics are doing. If Zarqawi's aim has been to show that the West...

(AP) A posting on an Islamic Internet site Saturday claimed that an al Qaeda-linked group has killed British hostage Kenneth Bigley. The claim could not immediately be confirmed. Bigley was kidnapped Sept. 16 with two Americans, Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley, who have since been beheaded. They were all taken — from their home in Baghdad — by the Tawhid and Jihad group of Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The Web site where the posting appeared has often carried messages from Zarqawi's followers, including gruesome video that showed Hensley and Armstrong being killed. It also showed video on Wednesday of...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The British and Iraqi governments said Thursday they would not bow to the demands of militants threatening to kill a British captive, despite a video message from the hostage pleading for his life. The kidnappers say they will behead Kenneth Bigley unless all Iraqi women are freed from U.S.-run jails. After a day of confusion Wednesday over whether one of two Iraqi women in U.S. custody in Iraq ( - ) would be freed, the interim Iraqi government said in a statement that Prime Minister Iyad Allawi was not willing to allow her release. "The government renews...

UK hostage's 'release sabotaged' A grainy 11-minute video carried Kenneth Bigley's plea The brother of British hostage Kenneth Bigley says the US has "sabotaged" his brother's release by refusing to free a detained woman scientist. Paul Bigley told the BBC there had been "a shadow of light" when Iraqi ministers said the woman would go free. But the US, which is holding the woman, ruled out any release, saying it would not give in to the kidnappers. Kenneth Bigley was seen in a video appealing to UK Prime Minister Tony Blair to help save his life. The Iraqi government insisted...

Briton 'had Gulf battle plans and links to US navy mole' By David Rennie in Washington and David Millward (Filed: 07/08/2004) A Briton who appeared in court in London yesterday on extradition charges allegedly was in possession of US navy battle plans and had contacts with an apparent Islamist spy within the service. American authorities claim that Babar Ahmad, 30, ran a terrorist fundraising and recruiting agency on the internet, much of it on behalf of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Two members of Babar Ahmad's family leave the court Ahmad, who appeared at Bow Street magistrate's court, was told his...