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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations and the European Union sent experts on Thursday to the Philippines to assess the capsize of a ferry last month with large quantities of a highly toxic chemical on board, a U.N. spokeswoman said.

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudan's government and Darfur's rebel groups are all using child soldiers in violation of international law, the U.N. rights rapporteur in Sudan Sima Samar said on Thursday.

PRAGUE (Reuters) - The Czech Republic protested to Russia on Thursday over what it called threats following the signing of a pact this week to host part of a U.S. missile defense shield.

VIENNA (Reuters) - The United States said on Thursday it would seek to push a nuclear trade deal with India past international and domestic hurdles with time running out before a deadline set by U.S. elections in November.

MOSCOW/TBLISI (Reuters) - Georgia recalled its ambassador from Moscow on Thursday after Russia said it had sent its fighter jets into its neighbor's airspace to prevent Georgian troops attacking a separatist region.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's president will meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday, with a confidence vote expected to be the main topic after the government's allies on the left withdrew support to protest against a nuclear deal with the United States.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish police on Thursday detained the suspected driver of the car used in an attack on the U.S. consulate in Istanbul this week, in which 6 people were killed, media reports said.

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Thursday denied that substantive negotiations had begun with the ruling ZANU-PF party of President Robert Mugabe.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran tested more missiles in the Gulf on Thursday, state media said, and the United States reminded Tehran that it was ready to defend its allies.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has foiled plans by five "terrorism" groups to target the Beijing Olympics, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday, citing a public security official.

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.