London - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was "delighted" to have been received by Queen Elizabeth II during a flying visit to London Thursday.

Merkel said she had told the British monarch during their private meeting in Buckingham Palace that Germany had "every interest in seeing the UK as a close partner and friend."

She had also made clear that she was "delighted that the UK was part and parcel of the EU," Merkel told journalists after the audience.

Taipei - Fourteen foreign and local baseball players were questioned by prosecutors in Taiwan Thursday as new evidence emerged in an investigation into alleged match-fixing by the T-Rex team.

The 14 include five foreign players. Three of them - including former US Major League baseball player Cory Bailey - have been suspended from playing indefinitely after they were questioned on October 8 and released on bail.

Damascus  - The US embassy in Damascus announced that for security reasons it would be closed for the day Thursday as thousands of protesters in the Syrian capital demonstrated against the recent US commando raid on a Syrian village near the Iraqi border.

Carrying pictures of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, protestors denounced US President George W Bush, with signs bearing slogans such as: "Bush: The supporter of terrorism around the world."

Dozens of students from the Syrian region of Bokmal, the location of Sunday's raid, protested near the embassy, which was surrounded by Syrian riot police.

Nairobi/Mogadishu - A prominent Muslim cleric has been arrested in connection with a wave of suicide bomb attacks in Somalia, reports said Thursday.

Five car bombs ripped through the breakaway Somaliland and Puntland regions on Wednesday, killing at least 26 people.

Most of the casualties came in Somaliland's capital Hargeysa, where bombs targeted the Ethiopian embassy, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) compound, and Somaliland's presidential palace.

Milan - AC Milan and lawyers for David Beckham were set to begin negotiations Thursday for the loan of the English star to the Serie A powerhouse.

The ANSA news agency quoted Milan vice president Adriano Galliani as saying that representatives of the 33-year-old midfielder advanced the date of a meeting originally scheduled for next week.

"We are kicking off the negotiation," Galliani said. "I don't know if it will have a positive ending or not, but I hope it will."

Frankfurt  - German book publishers on Thursday denounced this week's historic accord between Google and US authors, dubbing it "a Trojan Horse" which would make the US company the master of the world's knowledge.

Google, which has scanned 7 million books to include their contents in its internet search engine, announced Tuesday it would let US users read the pages of books that are out of print but are still in copyright.

Under the settlement with the US Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, royalties will be paid for past and future use of the books by Google.