World highlights

• Gunmen who kidnapped 30 people at a Red Crescent office in Baghdad on Sunday have freed 17 hostages, an official of the humanitarian group said. Maazen Abdulla, secretary-general of the Iraqi Red Crescent, said the victims were released unharmed in different parts of Baghdad on Sunday and yesterday.

• President George W. Bush hailed a new era of strategic cooperation with India as he signed a law that is a major step toward allowing New Delhi to buy US nuclear reactors and fuel for the first time in 30 years. Three other approvals - by the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group, the International Atomic Energy Agency and a second time by the US Congress, are still needed before US nuclear transfers to India actually can take place.

• Two car bombs exploded at oil company compounds in Nigeria's oil capital Port Harcourt damaging cars but causing no casualties, authorities said.The blasts occurred in the car park of a residential compound of Royal Dutch Shell, while the other was on a perimeter wall of a compound of Italian oil company Agip.

• Fidel Castro is not terminally ill and would make a public appearance shortly, but is unlikely to return to governing Cuba on a day-to-day basis, Cuban government officials told a visiting delegation of members of the US Congress.

• Astronauts aboard the International Space Station prepared for a fourth spacewalk to unstick a jammed solar array in an extra excursion that extended the space shuttle Discovery's mission at the orbiting outpost by a day.

• British detectives probing the murder of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko have wound up their investigation in Moscow and are due to leave for home today, a British police source said. No details of what the Scotland Yard investigators had discovered were available.