LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s Ministry of Defence has agreed to pay nearly three million pounds ($6 million) in compensation to a group of Iraqi civilians beaten and tortured by British troops in southern Iraq in 2003.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Police detained four suspects and patrolled the high-walled perimeter of the U.S. consulate in Istanbul on Thursday after 3 policemen and 3 gunmen were killed in what a minister said was a suicide attack.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Kurdish rebels say they will not release three German tourists kidnapped in eastern Turkey until Germany renounces policies against their group, a news agency close to the guerrillas said on Thursday.

PRAGUE (Reuters) – The Czech Republic protested to Russia on Thursday over what it called threats following the signing of a pact this week to host part of a U.S. missile defense shield.

TBILISI (Reuters) – Georgia is to recall its ambassador from Russia for consultations, Georgia’s foreign minister said on Thursday, after Moscow said its fighter jets had entered Georgian airspace.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey’s president met with the former head of the armed forces on Thursday amid efforts to ease political tensions over an alleged military coup plot. Turkey was rocked last week by the arrests of two senior retired generals, leading businessmen and journalists — all critical of the …

THE HAGUE (Reuters) – The U.N. war crimes tribunal on Thursday cleared former Macedonian Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski of responsibility for the murder of seven ethnic Albanians during a rebel insurgency in the country in 2001.

GAZA (Reuters) – Hamas arrested two militants who fired cross-border rockets into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip on Thursday, in the first such detentions since the Islamists and Israel agreed a truce last month, militants said.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia said on Thursday that its air force had flown over Georgia’s breakaway South Ossetia this week because it believed Tbilisi was preparing to attack the region. “The need arose to take urgent and active measures to prevent bloodshed and keep the situation within peaceful bounds,” Russia’s …

GAZA (Reuters) – Three Palestinian students hoping to take up prestigious scholarships to study in the United States despite an Israeli travel ban met U.S. consular officials on Thursday at the Israel-Gaza border for visa interviews.