Mogadishu/Paris - A group of armed Somali men kidnapped six foreigners - four aid workers and two pilots - near the town of Dusamareb in central Somali on Wednesday, residents said.
Mohamoud Dhaqane, a businessman in Dusamareb, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that the six were seized by a convoy of armed gunmen at an airstrip.
Vilnius - Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus described Russia's plans to deploy missiles in its Kaliningrad enclave as "beyond comprehension" Wednesday.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said earlier in the day that Russia would deploy short-range Iskander missiles in its Baltic Sea enclave, which borders Lithuania, in answer to US plans to site a missile defence system in Eastern Europe.
Hamburg - Former world champion Fernando Alonso has renewed his contract at Renault until 2010, the French Formula One team announced on Wednesday.
Team-mate Nelson Piquet Jr was given another one-year contract.
The Spaniard Alonso hopes to relive his glory of the past at the team for which he won the world title in 2005 and 2006. He spent the 2007 season at McLaren but was unhappy there and returned to Renault.
Berlin - Plans to partly privatize Germany's national railway system went on hold Wednesday, with senior officials suggesting there would be no stock flotation before a general election next September.
A sale of just under one quarter of DB Mobility Logistics, a unit operating passenger and freight trains, had been set for last week, but was called off because of the global financial crisis.
Damascus - Syria hopes that the new US president would change the US foreign policy, said Syrian Minister of Information said on Wednesday.
"We hope that the US drop its policies of wars and boycott and would adopt diplomacy and dialogue," reported the Syrian news agency SANA quoting Hohsen Belal.
Belal added that he would wish for more peace in the Middle East.
The US has raided a Syrian village a couple of weeks ago killing eight civilians, according to Syria. The event has escalated tensions between the two countries.
London - Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, who was Wednesday given an academic briefing on the origins of the credit crunch, wound up the "lesson" with the searching question of why nobody had seen the crisis coming.
The 82-year-old monarch had the complexities of the current global financial crisis explained to her during the inauguration of a new building at the renowned London School of Economics (LSE).
Mogadishu/Paris - A group of armed Somali men kidnapped six foreigners - four aid workers and two pilots - near the town of Dusamareb in central Somali on Wednesday, residents said.
Vilnius - Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus described Russia's plans to deploy missiles in its Kaliningrad enclave as "beyond comprehension" Wednesday.
Hamburg - Former world champion Fernando Alonso has renewed his contract at Renault until 2010, the French Formula One team announced on Wednesday.
Berlin - Plans to partly privatize Germany's national railway system went on hold Wednesday, with senior officials suggesting there would be no stock flotation before a general election next September.
Damascus - Syria hopes that the new US president would change the US foreign policy, said Syrian Minister of Information said on Wednesday.
London - Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, who was Wednesday given an academic briefing on the origins of the credit crunch, wound up the "lesson" with the searching question of why nobody had seen the crisis coming.
