Conakry, Guinea - A section of Guinea's military Tuesday launched an apparent coup just hours after the death of the West African nation's long-term President Lansana Conte was announced.

A statement read out on the radio said that both the government and the constitution were suspended.

Captain Moussa Dadis Camara said that a council of civilian and military leaders would be set up to replace the government as state institutions were "incapable of resolving the crises which have been confronting the country," the BBC reported.

Baghdad - A bomb ripped

Moscow - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned Tuesday that "the era of cheap gas" would soon be over in an address to ministers of gas exporting countries meeting in Moscow.

"The expense necessary for the development of fields is rising sharply, and this means that despite the current financial crisis and the fall of prices on energy commodities, the era of cheap energy resources, of cheap gas, is coming to an end," Putin said in televised comments.

Berlin - In a Christmas message Wednesday, German President Horst Koehler has backed calls for a better world financial system where capitalism "serves everybody and nobody has to feel oppressed by it."

Berlin has been pushing for reforms which would require regulators in every nation to crack down on risky investment schemes.

Baghdad - The Iraqi parliament's Sunni speaker on Tuesday said he would resign under certain conditions, minutes before he convened a closed-door emergency session with MPs to decide his fate, media reports said.

Mahmoud al-Mashhadani told lawmakers before the session that in return for his resignation he wanted to be named head of a human rights association, Al-Arabiya news channel reported.

He also asked that his successor be chosen from the Sunni Iraqi Accordance Bloc (Tawafuk), Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency reported.

Karlsruhe, Germany - Germany has arrested the former mayor of a northern Rwandan town on charges of massacring thousands of Tutsis during the 1994 genocide, according to federal prosecutors Tuesday.

The Hutu man, 51, was picked up by police in the Frankfurt area on Monday. He is suspected of either overseeing or calling for multiple murders between 1990 and 1994.