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ABUJA (Reuters) - The main militant group in Nigeria's oil-producing Niger Delta said on Thursday it was abandoning a ceasefire, in protest at a British offer to help tackle lawlessness in the region.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan pledged on Thursday to boost ties with Iraq and urged the region to do more to help the Baghdad government rebuild after years of war.

TASHKENT (Reuters) - A series of explosions at a Soviet-era arms depot in southern Uzbekistan killed at least three people and smashed windows in buildings several miles away, official media and witnesses said on Thursday.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Thursday the United Nations war crimes tribunal in the Hague was biased and its activities should be phased out as soon as possible.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Nuclear negotiators began hammering out procedures to check North Korea's account of its nuclear programs on Thursday, with envoys describing the talks as helpful but far from conclusive.

TBILISI (Reuters) - Russia should help resolve tension over Georgia's rebel regions instead of contributing to it, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Thursday, and she urged an end to violence there.

GAZA (Reuters) - Hamas arrested seven Palestinians who fired rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip on Thursday, a militant faction said, in the first such detentions since the Islamist group and Israel agreed a truce last month.

William Kemble-Diaz is a senior real estate correspondent and editor of www.reutersrealestate.com, who has worked for Reuters as a financial journalist since 2001. His mother emigrated to London in 1961 to work, like other Spanish migrants at the time, in Britain's hotel trade, where she met his father. She now lives in Valencia. In the following story, William tells how his father's remains in a Spanish cemetery were removed without the family's knowledge.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict arrives in Sydney on Sunday as the headline "rock star" act in the Catholic Church's World Youth Day -- its version of Woodstock, five days of peace, love and Christianity.

TUZLA, Turkey (Reuters) - Turkey is jockeying to be Europe's biggest shipbuilder, but a spate of deaths shows the need for sector reform and the cost of spectacular growth on the fringe of the European Union.

JAKARTA (Reuters) - A small, influential Islamist party in Indonesia is alarming moderates who fear this secular but predominantly Muslim country may head for wider use of sharia law and become less tolerant of other religions and cultures.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - The only man convicted in connection with the 1985 Air India bombings was granted bail on Wednesday as he awaits trial for allegedly lying to a Canadian court that he knew nothing about the plot.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's government is under new pressure to tackle rampant police incompetence after a damning report by human rights investigators blamed police commanders for a fatal disco raid that killed 12 people.

LIMA (Reuters) - Thousands of Peruvians protested on Wednesday to denounce President Alan Garcia's free-market policies, which they say have failed to benefit the poor during six years of booming economic growth.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Wednesday condemned the attack on its consulate in Istanbul and a State Department spokesman said he could neither confirm nor rule out al Qaeda involvement.

VIENNA (Reuters) - India on Wednesday submitted a draft nuclear safeguards accord to International Atomic Energy Agency governors for approval, the IAEA said, a crucial step towards launching a U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation deal.

WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland's prime minister said on Wednesday his country could reach agreement with the United States in two weeks on a missile defence shield, but indicated he would not budge on tough conditions he has set for a deal.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel has indicted two of its Arab citizens for links to al Qaeda and for planning attacks inside the Jewish state, the Shin Bet counter-intelligence agency said on Wednesday.

PARIS (Reuters) - Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner summoned the Chinese ambassador to France on Wednesday to ask him to explain his comments warning the French president not to meet the Dalai Lama.

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Darfur militiamen ambushed and killed seven members of a joint U.N.-African Union (UNAMID) peacekeeping mission and wounded 22 others, the United Nations said on Wednesday.