A round-up of today's other stories in brief.
Hostage crew freed before French raid
PARIS -The 30-strong crew of a luxury French yacht seized by Somali pirates a week ago were freed without incident yesterday but French troops later captured half the pirates, French military officials said.
France sent a warship and special forces to the region after the pirates seized the three-master in the Gulf of Aden last Friday.
French troops were standing by as negotiations to free the hostages took place as recently as yesterday morning. - (Reuters)
Serbs killed for organs - claim
Carla Del Ponte, the ex-chief prosecutor for war crimes in former Yugoslavia, has unleashed a storm of recrimination with allegations of a trade in human body parts in Kosovo and Albania after Nato bombed Serbia in 1999.
Del Ponte claims, based on what she describes as credible reports and witnesses, that Kosovan Albanian guerrillas transported hundreds of Serbian prisoners into northern Albania where they were killed by the guerillas , and their organs "harvested" and trafficked out of Tirana airport.
- (Guardian service)
At least 36 dead in Libya crash
TRIPOLI -At least 36 people were killed yesterday when a bus in which they were travelling collided with a car outside the Libyan capital.
Nine other passengers were injured, five of them seriously, it said, adding that the dead and the injured were from several foreign countries. - (Reuters)
More troops for Afghanistan
DUSHANBE -About 3,000 French troops will operate in Afghanistan, France's foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said yesterday.
President Nicolas Sarkozy announced last week that Paris would send an extra 700 troops to Afghanistan, which would bring France's contribution to Nato's fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda there to roughly 2,300 men. - (Reuters)
Survivors jailed for illegal entry
BANGKOK -Dozens of smuggled immigrants who survived a suffocating lorry journey that killed 54 of their compatriots were jailed yesterday for illegally entering Thailand and will be deported back to Burma after serving their sentence, a court in Ranong ruled.
Fourteen other survivors under the age of 18 were sent home without trial, they said. - (Reuters)
Party boss gets 18 years' prison
BEIJING -A Chinese court yesterday sentenced former Shanghai Communist Party boss Chen Liangyu to 18 years in prison on corruption charges, his lawyer and media said.
Cheng is the most senior party official to be jailed for graft in China in a decade. - (Reuters)