Security officers in Baghdad recounted the deadliest bomb blast which rocked the Iraqi capital Monday, killing 28 people, including women and schoolgirls, and leaving dozens wounded.

According to witnesses, Monday’s attack took place on Kassra Street, a road lined with restaurants and tea shops popular for breakfast with Iraqi security forces, as a bus carrying young school girls drove past.  

Vienna - The price of crude produced by the Organization of Petroleum Export

Moscow - The United States has proffered new plans for a missile defence system to Russia in the hopes of mollifying Russia's objections to the program and salvaging nuclear control accords between the two nations, Russia's Foreign Ministry confirmed Friday.

Ministry spokesman Igor Lyakin-Frolov said Russia is studying the proposal. It will be discussed when the US and Russian defence and foreign ministers meet for their next round of two-plus-two format talks. No date has been scheduled yet for those talks.

Washington's overture comes after Russia has threatened reactions should the United States set up parts of components of the missile defence system in eastern Europe.

London  - One of the five remaining British veterans of World War I has died at the age of 108 in Australia, where he moved in 1928, the BBC reported Thursday.

Sydney Maurice Lucas, who was born in Leicester, in central England, on September 21, 1900, regularly led the annual Anzac Day parade in Melbourne, said the report.

He was among the last batch of conscripts to be called up in August, 1918. In World War II, he volunteered for the Australian army in June, 1940, and was posted to a machine gun unit.

Lucas died on 4 November near Melbourne.

Brussels  - The Polish government must sell off two shipyards which were the cradle of the anti-Communist Solidarity movement in order to claim back hundreds of millions of euros in illegal state aid, the European Union's executive ruled Thursday.

"State aid granted to the shipyards in Gdynia and Szczecin gives rise to disproportionate distortions of competition ... in breach of EC Treaty state aid rules, and must be repaid," EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes told journalists in Brussels.