World - Reuters

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert defied a barrage of calls to resign on Friday after he admitted taking cash from an American businessman at the centre of a police inquiry into allegations of bribery.

TORONTO/OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian health officials said on Friday that a death and reported outbreak of flu-like symptoms aboard a cross-Canada train were not due to an infectious disease and in fact were likely not related at all.

HARARE (Reuters) - South African leader Thabo Mbeki and President Robert Mugabe held talks on Friday on Zimbabwe's election crisis ahead of a possible run-off that has raised fears violence could escalate.

TUNCELI, Turkey (Reuters) - Turkish military sources said at least 20 Kurdish separatists and two Turkish soldiers were killed after Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas attacked a military base in southeast Turkey on Friday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's ties to Colombian rebels are deeper than previously thought, U.S. officials said on Friday, following an analysis of files on a dead guerrilla leader's laptops.

ST POELTEN, Austria (Reuters) - An Austrian court on Friday ordered Josef Fritzl, who kept his daughter in a cellar for 24 years and had seven children with her, to be kept in custody for a further month, a court spokesman said.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan's ruling alliance failed to break the deadlock on reinstating judges sacked by President Pervez Musharraf during talks in London on Friday, rekindling speculation the month-old coalition might collapse.

BERLIN (Reuters) - The Dalai Lama says he understands why Tibetan exiles were angry that the Olympic torch reached the top of Mount Everest but had advised them against protesting.

HAVANA (Reuters) - With music, dancing and rum, Cubans celebrated on Friday the likely return of a record they consider rightfully theirs -- the world's longest cigar.

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Fighting in Mogadishu killed six more people on Friday, including four orphans, a day after Islamist rebels firing grenades briefly seized a major police base in the heart of Somalia's capital.

MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish journalist Ricardo Ortega was shot dead by foreign soldiers in Haiti in 2004, according to a court order from the Caribbean country, the contents of which were made public by Ortega's family on Friday.

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lankan troops backed by warplanes captured a town in the northwest of the island on Friday after killing 31 Tamil Tiger rebels in a battle, the military said, as it pressed on with an offensive in the region.

KABUL (Reuters) - A soldier from the NATO-led force in Afghanistan was killed during an operation in a province near the Pakistan border on Friday, the force said.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A rocket hit the BBC office in Baghdad on Friday but no one was wounded in the attack, the British broadcaster said.

GENEVA (Reuters) - The five major nuclear-armed powers said on Friday the Non-Proliferation Treaty was under threat and cited Iran's uranium enrichment campaign in a rare joint call for action to shore up the NPT.

JUBA, Sudan (Reuters) - At least 25 attacks on aid workers in south Sudan's capital Juba in the past two months have forced staff to relocate and is hindering development in the region recovering from Africa's longest civil war, aid officials said on Friday.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Dmitry Medvedev warned on Friday against "irresponsible ambitions" that lead to war as tanks and missile launchers rumbled over Red Square in a show of Russian fire-power not seen since the fall of the Soviet Union.

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) - Three people were killed and a dozen were wounded on Friday in a series of explosions in southeast Turkey blamed on separatist Kurdish guerrillas, security sources told Reuters.