Nairobi/Djibouti - A ceasefire agreement between the Somali government and parts of the Islamist opposition is set to take effect on November 5, after the warring parties reached an agreement Sunday evening in Djibouti.

Moscow - Texan space tourist Richard Gariott said Monday the Russian space agency and NASA should give business entrepreneurs wider access to the International Space Station (ISS).

Silicon Valley millionaire Garriott, who made his fortune designing fantasy computer games, said he fit the profile as he spoke with journalists three days after landing back to earth from his tour of the space station.

"I think NASA and Roscosmos and other partners in the ISS should take broad steps to encourage businessmen, such as myself, to take advantage of the profits to be had in the space sphere - it would be a huge loss not to," Garriott was quoted by news agency Interfax as saying from the cosmonauts training base in Star City outside Moscow.

Berlin- As fears of recession grow, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is to meet this week with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to discuss the financial markets crisis, her spokesman said Monday.

The two are to meet Thursday in London and speak to the media afterwards, spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said. Merkel is also to pay a call at Buckingham Palace to visit Queen Elizabeth II.

London - Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem was holding talks with is British counterpart David Miliband in London Monday, but a planned joint news conference was called off following reports of a US raid into Syrian territory, the Foreign Office said.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said the press conference had been abandoned because both sides had been concerned that it would be dominated by questions about the US raid.

Commentators said it would clearly have been awkward for Miliband, as the representative of the US' principal ally in Iraq, to have appeared alongside al-Muallem at a time when Syria was condemning what it described as an act of "serious aggression" by the US.

Harare/Johannesburg - Dozens of women activists were arrested in the Zimbabwean capital Harare Monday for protesting over the suffering caused by a severe economic crisis.

Riot police broke up a demonstration by at least 300 women from the Women's Coalition of Zimbabwe outside a hotel, where southern African leaders were meeting to discuss Zimbabwe's political impasse with the country's rival leaders.

Vienna - Besides Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Russian carrier S7 Airlines is also still in the race for taking over Austrian Airlines AG, Austria's state holding OeIAG announced Monday.