■ United Kingdom
Iran's ambassador leaves
The Iranian ambassador to London has returned to Tehran, British and Iranian officials said yesterday, amid a dispute over the arrest in Britain of an Iranian diplomat and pressure over Iran's nuclear program. "We understand that the Iranian ambassador has returned to Tehran, but this is not a downgrading of relations," a British Foreign Office spokesman said. Relations have been strained between the two countries following the arrest on August 21 of Hadi Soleimanpour in connection with the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center which killed 85 people and wounded some 200.
■ Colombia
President slams insurgents
President Alvaro Uribe called for the destruction of Colombia's insurgent groups, saying on Tuesday that they have spread their inhumane ways beyond the country's borders by kidnapping 46 Venezuelans. He condemned the brutality of both the leftist rebels and the right-wing paramilitary groups who are fighting the rebels. "We must make every effort to capture the violent groups here, to reduce them in number here, to destroy them here and keep them from doing harm on the other side," Uribe said, referring to the cross-border kidnapping raids carried out by the rebels and paramilitaries.
■ United States
US$1 million for POW story
Former prisoner of war Jessica Lynch has signed a US$1 million agreement with Alfred Knopf, giving the injured former US Army private the chance to tell her own story, the publisher said on Tuesday. The publisher said the book, I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story, will be written by former New York Times reporter Rick Bragg. Sources familiar with the book said it will tell the tale of a small-town girl who goes to war and becomes a national hero, recognition she does not feel she deserves. An army private, she became a symbol of American patriotism during the war, which generated controversy as accounts of her rescue in Iraq varied.
■ Russia
Bombs kill train commuters
At least five people died and another 30 were wounded when bombs rocked a commuter train in southern Russia, killing at least five people, officials said. Dmitry Oliferenko, a spokesman for President Vladimir Putin's envoy to southern Russia, said that five people died when two bombs exploded at both ends of the second car of the train on route from Kislovodsk to Mineralnye Vody in the Caucasus region. Another 15 people were hospitalized, he said. Each of the bombs contained about 150 grams of explosives according to a preliminary estimate. There were about 50 people in the car when the explosion occurred, railway officials said.
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