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The racing yacht, the Kingdom Of Bahrain, owned by Sail Bahrain and crewed by the five Britons, was stopped by Iranian naval vessels last Wednesday as it sailed from Bahrain to Dubai. The crew members are still in Iran and are understood to be safe and well. Their families have been informed. The Foreign Office said the yacht might have "inadvertently" strayed into Iranian waters. The sailors were heading to Dubai to join the Dubai-Muscat Offshore Sailing Race. One of the men onboard has been named as David Bloomer, believed to be a radio presenter in Bahrain. A source later...

(11-13) 17:44 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- Friday the 13th was the luckiest day of the year for two British adventurers who passed under the Golden Gate Bridge on Friday morning after rowing a 23-foot-long boat more than 5,000 miles across the Pacific from Japan. The voyage took 189 days - more than six months - on a boat made of Kevlar and propelled only by muscle power. The two men were stalked by whales, tossed by storms, ran low on food and sometimes despaired. They did not sight land until Thursday, when the dim silhouette of Point Reyes appeared on...

LONDON (AFP) – Britons are so lazy that one in six cannot be bothered to change television channel if the remote control is not working, according to a study published on Monday. More than half said they would take the lift rather than climb two flights of stairs to their workplace, while three quarters had too little energy for sex at the end of a long day. An entire generation risks being blighted by idleness, warned Nuffield Health, a non-profit organisation which commissioned the poll. "Ready-meals, remote controls and even Internet shopping are all contributing to a dangerously lazy and...

BRITAIN'S row with Iran deepened last night after the Tehran government threatened to put British Embassy staff on trial. The Muslim clerics who call the shots in Iran accuse local workers at the embassy of fanning the anti-government protests which followed last month's disputed election. Foreign Secretary David Miliband said he was urgently trying to speak to his counterpart in Tehran over the legal threat to the staff. Earlier, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of Iran's powerful Guardian Council, claimed embassy workers had confessed to involvement in the protests. Jannati said: "In these events, their embassy had a presence. "Some people...

TEHRAN: Iran said on Monday it has freed five of the local British embassy staff it arrested on accusations of stoking post-election unrest, a move that further threatened tense ties with London. "Eight people were arrested. Five were freed and three are still being interrogated," ministry spokesman Hassan Ghashghavi said at a press conference in Tehran. Earlier English-language state television Press TV had spoken of a total of nine arrests. Ghashghavi also said that Iran, which has accused Western nations particularly Britain and the United States of "meddling," has no current plans to close embassies or downgrade diplomatic ties with...

Iran has arrested eight local British embassy staff, triggering London's fury and further exacerbating tensions with the West over the post-election turmoil in the Islamic republic. The latest backlash against what Iranian leaders have branded as foreign "meddling" came as opposition leaders continued to defy the regime, rejecting a panel set up to hold a partial recount in the hotly-disputed presidential vote.

The European Union’s 27 nations on Sunday joined forces to condemn Iran’s detention of British embassy staff in Tehran,as tensions escalated between Iran and the west in the wake of the disputed elections. After Iran arrested nine local employees working at the UK embassy in Tehran, EU foreign ministers meeting in Corfu said they would respond firmly to any further “harassment or intimidation [by Iran] of foreign or Iranian staff working in embassies”. David Miliband, Britain’s foreign secretary, said he was “deeply concerned” by the arrests and warned their continued detention was “quite unacceptable’’.The seriousness of the diplomatic stand-off was...

Iran 'must free UK embassy staff' David Miliband: "Harassment and intimidation" The European Union has demanded the immediate release of Iranian staff at Britain's embassy in Tehran detained on Saturday over post-election unrest. EU ministers meeting in Greece warned that "harassment or intimidation" of embassy staff would be met with a "strong and collective" response. Iranian media reported the detention of eight local staff at the UK mission over their alleged role in the unrest. UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband dismissed the allegations as baseless. Relations between the countries are strained since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused the UK of stoking...

CORFU, Greece (Reuters) - The European Union on Sunday condemned Iran's crackdown on post-election protesters and said the EU would meet any Iranian intimidation of European diplomatic staff with a "strong and collective response". Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, whose country takes over the EU presidency from Wednesday, said the Iranian government had been weakened at home and abroad. "Obviously the regime is trying to preserve its position by very harsh repression. But that cannot hide the fact that this is a weakened regime. It has lost legitimacy both internally and externally," Bildt said. EU foreign ministers were meeting on...

Iran has detained several local British embassy staff, sparking a new row with Britain on Sunday that underscored the hardline leadership's effort to blame post-election unrest on foreign powers, not popular anger. EDITORS' NOTE: Reuters and other foreign media are subject to Iranian restrictions on their ability to report, film or take pictures in Tehran. Iranian police stand guard during an anti-Britain protest in front of the British embassy in Tehran June 23, 2009. (REUTERS/Fars News/Files) British Foreign Secretary David Miliband demanded the release of all the staff still held and said his European Union colleagues had agreed to a...

Iran arrested nine local employees of the British Embassy in Tehran Saturday, drawing a terse response from the U.K. government and signaling an escalation of tensions between two countries with a history of difficult relations. AFP/Getty Images Iranian riot policemen stood guard outside the British embassy in Tehran on June 15, 2009. Iranian media reported the arrests on Sunday, saying the employees had been detained for allegedly playing a role in post-election demonstrations in Tehran. Speaking Sunday during a visit to Greece, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said some of the nine who were arrested have been released, though he...

The European Union has demanded the immediate release of Iranian staff at Britain's embassy in Tehran detained on Saturday over post-election unrest. EU ministers meeting in Greece warned that "harassment or intimidation" of embassy staff would be met with a "strong and collective" response. Iranian media reported that eight local staff at the UK mission had been held for their role in the recent riots. UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband dismissed the allegations as baseless. Relations between the countries are strained after President Ahmadinejad accused the UK of stoking post-election protests, which London denies. Iran has repeatedly accused foreign powers...

EDITOR'S NOTE: Iranian authorities have barred journalists for international news organizations from reporting on the streets and ordered them to stay in their offices. (snip) Iranian authorities have detained several local employees of the British Embassy in Tehran, a move that Britain's foreign secretary Sunday called "harassment and intimidation" and reflected a hardening of the regime's stance toward the West. Iranian media said eight local embassy staff were detained for an alleged role in postelection protests, but gave no further details. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said "about nine" employees were detained Saturday and that four had been released. The...

Britain today condemned the arrest of nine employees of the British embassy in Tehran and demanded their immediate release. An Iranian news agency reported this morning that the Iranian workers had been detained for involvement in the post-election unrest in the Islamic Republic. The arrests follow a week of escalating rhetoric against Britain, which was accused by the Iranian foreign minister of flying in jet-loads of spies to disrupt Iran's presidential elections on July 12. David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, denied that the mission had been involved in any post-election unrest and called for the release of the embassy staff....

A number of Britons have been arrested in Tehran following clashes between protesters and police, Iran state television has reported. The Iranian intelligence minister was quoted on IRINN as saying British passport-holders involved in the unrest have been detained. Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei also blamed England for issuing propaganda against Iran. IRINN quoted Mr Ejei as referring to the "meddling of some alien countries" and saying that one which "strongly propagated in its media against the Islamic Republic of Iran and some of its agents have been involved in Iran's tension is England". A spokesman for the British Foreign Office...

Britain today ordered the expulsion of two Iranian diplomats in a retaliatory move that followed the expulsion of two British diplomats from Tehran yesterday. Announcing the expulsions to parliament, the prime minister, Gordon Brown, said the Iranian action had been "unjustified".

The government of Iran is turning up the heat on the British government, with a 'protest' led by Basij militia being planned for Tuesday afternoon at the British embassy in Tehran.A 'student leader' has been quoted by name threatening a repeat of the 1979 takeover and hostage-taking at the American embassy that lasted 444 days.The British government has started to evacuate family members of its diplomatic staff and the Iranian foreign minister has hinted at expelling the British ambassador.From WashingtonTV (translated from Persian):the news network of the Islamic Republic’s Voice and Vision Organization [state-owned radio and television] reports that some...

Britain has begun evacuating the families of diplomats based in Tehran after pro-regime student leaders made plans to march on the embassy on Tuesday. Previous demonstrations outside the British embassy have led to violent attacks on the mission in which grenades have been thrown. The order to withdraw, which does not yet apply to embassy staff, also came as Iranian officials threatened to sever ties with the UK. A Foreign Office spokesman said: "The ongoing violence has also had a significant impact on the families of our staff who have been unable to carry on their lives as normal. "As...

Britain's Foreign Office said Monday it was evacuating the families of staff based in Iran amid continued violence in the wake of the country's disputed election. The decision came after repeated criticism of Britain by Iranian leaders, and an increasingly tense atmosphere following angry clashes between demonstrators and security officials. Staff will remain in Iran for now, and the Foreign Office confirmed that it was not advising other British nationals to leave. However, it said officials are monitoring the situation with the utmost vigilance. "The families of our staff have been unable to carry out their lives as usual. As...

DUBAI/LONDON (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's North African wing said on Wednesday it had carried out its threat to kill a British hostage it was holding in the Sahara. The announcement of the killing came as U.S. President Barack Obama headed to the Middle East hoping to start mending U.S. ties with the Islamic world in a speech that will tackle issues including extremist violence. The British Foreign Office said Dyer was kidnapped on the border between Niger and Mali in late January, but declined to give any more details about him.