Washington  - A US federal appeals court on Wednesday blocked the release of 17 Chinese Muslims held at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba prison camp to the United States.

The US Court of Appeals in Washington overruled a lower court decision that ordered the release of the Uighurs into the United States.

The US government no longer regards the men as a threat but will not return them to China out of concern they will be abused. Washington has been unable to find a third country willing to take them.

Bogota  - Five members of the Colombian Air Force (FAC) died Wednesday as the training plane they were travelling in crashed.

The machine had taken off from a FAC base in the municipality of Puerto Salgar and fell to the ground shortly afterwards near La Dorada, in the central Colombian province of Caldas. The causes of the accident were not immediately known.

FAC commander Jorge Ballesteros said the dead included a major, two second lieutenants and two technicians. He said the cause of the crash was being investigated but ruled out sabotage or a rebel attack.

Zurich - A Brazilian woman who claimed she was attacked in Zurich by racists is herself being investigated, the Swiss police said Wednesday, on suspicion of misleading the authorities about the incident.

The 26-year-old had alleged that she was attacked at a train station by three neo-Nazis, who cut her body and caused her to miscarry twins.

Pictures of the woman that circulated after the incident showed the wounds, which included an etching of the letters SVP, the initials in German of the right-wing Swiss People's Party, into her legs.

Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim had said the case appeared to have been sparked by xenophobia.

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Cairo - Egyptian pharmacists and truck drivers went back to work on Wednesday, ending their separate strikes after both reached compromises with the government.

Pharmacists in privately-owned drugstores suspended their two-day- old strike against a new tax law following talks between the Ministry of Finance and the Pharmacists' Syndicate, Mahmoud Abdel-Maqsoud, secretary-general of the syndicate, announced late on Tuesday.

Abdel-Maqsoud told reporters the syndicate had agreed to suspend its strike after the government agreed "it would not require the pharmacists to pay the new taxes retroactively for the period between 2005 and 2008."

Riyadh  - Saudi Arabia took custody of al-Qaeda commander Mohammed al-Awfi from Yemeni authorities on Tuesday, according to Saudi security sources.