Two Austrians freed after being held hostage in the Sahara for months by Islamic militants were tired but healthy when they arrived back in Austria yesterday for medical checks, two days after their release.
Andrea Kloiber, 43, and Wolfgang Ebner, 51, disappeared in February while on holiday in Tunisia and are believed to have been held by Al-Qaeda's North African wing in a remote desert area of Mali.
They landed in Vienna late yesterday without making a public appearance on medical advice. They were taken to a military hospital in the capital by helicopter and are in relatively good health, according to the Foreign Ministry.
It was not immediately clear how the pair had been freed.
Bond film opens with blazing guns
The new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, debuted in Britain on Friday to record one-day ticket sales of £4.94 million, distributor Columbia Pictures said yesterday.
The total tops Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the previous record holder with an opening day haul of £4.025 million in 2005, and it also beat the £2.9 million first-day total for the last Bond flick, Casino Royale (2006), Columbia said.
In Quantum of Solace, British super spy Bond (Daniel Craig) is on a mission across South America and Europe to stop an eco-terrorist from controlling precious natural resources, and he wants to learn why the woman he loved in Casino Royale betrayed him.
Casino Royale was a huge box office success with a global haul of $594 million.
Friday's British opening of Quantum of Solace in 542 theatres will be followed by a November 14 debut of the film in the United States and Canada.
Police hunt editor's murder suspect
Croatian and Bosnian police yesterday stepped up their murder hunt for two men suspected of blowing up a newspaper editor and one of his colleagues, after CCTV footage showed one of the suspects planting the bomb.
Zagreb police pressed murder and conspiracy charges on Friday against five individuals in the murder of Croatian Nacional weekly editor Ivo Pukanic and his marketing chief. Three Croats are in custody while two Serbs, one of them with a Bosnian and a Croatian passport, are on the run.
Italian ex-freemason boss to have TV show
The former head of an outlawed masonic lodge linked to some of Italy's biggest scandals has sparked an outcry by announcing that he will take part in a television talk show to give his version of events.
Licio Gelli, the 89-year old former grandmaster of the shadowy Propaganda 2 (P2) group, will be the main guest in Venerabile Italia (Venerable Italy), a programme on Italy's history from fascism to the 1980s.
The P2 was founded in 1969 and used to be the country's most powerful secret organisation with prominent politicians, business leaders and military officers as members.
It has been at the centre of a number of investigations into allegations that it conspired with right-wing extremists and the Mafia to destabilise governments through bombings and violence, often blamed on extreme leftists.
Georgian parliament endorses new PM
Georgia's parliament endorsed career diplomat Grigol Mgaloblishvili as prime minister yesterday in a step billed by President Mikheil Saakashvili as the start of a reform drive.
Saakashvili has promised wide-ranging democratic reforms, in what analysts say is an attempt to offset domestic criticism over ex-Soviet Georgia's crushing defeat by Russia in a five-day war in August.
The 150-seat parliament, dominated by Saakashvili loyalists, voted 98-11 to elect 35-year-old Mgaloblishvili, an Oxford-educated diplomat who until this week was Georgia's ambassador to Turkey.