The son of Colonel Gaddafi today claimed Libya’s original prisoner transfer deal with the UK had targeted the Lockerbie bomber and was directly linked to talks on trade and oil.

IRAN has successfully sent its first domestically-made satellite into orbit, the country’s president announced yesterday, claiming a significant step in an ambitious space programme that has worried international observers.

Europe’s governments are under pressure today to back their words of support for Barack Obama with action to help the new US President close Guantanamo Bay.

Britain today urged more countries to sign up to the Chemical Weapons Convention as Lebanon finally acceded to the arms control agreement.

Thousands of stranded tourists will be flown out of Thai military bases in the next 48 hours, the country’s tourism minister promised today.

Higher Education Minister Bill Rammell travelled to Israel today to show solidarity with Israeli academics amid efforts by a British professors’ union to shun Israeli colleagues in protest of the occupation of Palestinian territories.

The mystery blast in North Korea was not a nuclear explosion, a western envoy said today after he visited the site.

Britain’s ambassador to North Korea plans to travel tomorrow to the site of an explosion that shot a mushroom cloud into the sky to verify claims it was caused by planned blasting for a hydroelectric project.

NORTH Korea said yesterday that the large explosion near its border with China several days ago was a “deliberate detonation of a mountain” as part of a hydroelectric project.

A new high-speed passenger train derailed today in north-western Turkey, and officials said 36 people were killed.

China has told Britain and the US to mind their own business over its refusal to allow full democracy for Hong Kong in the near future.

Six Britons detained in Mexico after being rescued from a waterlogged cavern were tonight facing another round of questioning by the authorities there.

Tony Blair was today struggling to hold together the coalition which took military action in Iraq, after the Spanish Prime Minister-elect accused him and US President George W Bush of going to war on the basis of lies.

ON October 9, Trinity College Dublin will host an international panel of speakers to debate the merits of America’s current foreign policy.

NORTH KOREA yesterday said future nuclear talks with America would be a waste of time if Washington insists the communist country first scrap its suspected atomic weapons programmes.