Cairo - Egyptian security forces have detained 30 Egyptian truck drivers delivering supplies to the Gaza Strip, a source in the interior ministry told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on Wednesday.

The drivers were held, pending investigation, in Northern Sinai, the source said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

He added that if security forces found nothing after a thorough investigation and search of the trucks, the drivers would be released and allowed to continue their journey.

London  - British officials have been given the green light by US authorities to visit a detainee at Guantanamo Bay in order to prepare his return to Britain, Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Wednesday.

Britain has previously said that it would accept Binyam Mohamed, a 30-year-old Ethiopian, who was resident in Britain before his arrest in 2002 and transfer to Guantanamo two years later.

Miliband made his announcement after a meeting in London Wednesday with Lieutenant Colonel Yvonne Bradley, the detainee's US military lawyer.

Berlin/Cairo  - German archaeologists may have tricked Egyptian customs officials into allowing them to smuggle the bust of Queen Nefertiti to Berlin nearly a century ago, according to a secret document unearthed recently.

The German magazine Der Spiegel revealed details of the document, which could prompt calls from Egypt for a return of the 3,400-year-figure of the pharaonic queen, hailed as the world's most beautiful woman.

Sydney  - The body count reached 173 on Tuesday in Australia's devastating wildfires, more than doubling the death toll from the country's previous worst forest fires in 1983.

Authorities in the south-coast city of Melbourne said army bulldozers are clearing the path for forensic teams to enter hamlets cut off by Saturday's inferno.

In tiny Strathewen, which only had a population of 450, 26 bodies have been found so far.

Wellington  - The search for a Dutch tourist and the pilot of a microlight aircraft that crashed on a sightseeing flight over New Zealand's Abel Tasman National Park resumed on Tuesday.

A wing of the plane was spotted from the air on Monday afternoon after it failed to return to Motueka on schedule, but a search of dense bush in the 22,530 hectare park found no trace of the couple.

The area where the plane is believed to have crashed is extremely rugged with deep gorges, a spokesman for the search operation told Radio New Zealand.

Mexico City  - The police chief in the Mexican resort city of Cancun was removed from his position on Monday and taken to Mexico City for questioning, following the murder of a general who had been designated to combat the drug trade in the area.

Cancun Mayor Gregorio Sanchez said the city's top official for public safety and traffic, Francisco Velasco Delgado, was taken to an office in the capital that specializes in organized crime issues.