A retired British couple  have been released by Somali pirates after being held captive for more than a year.

Paul, 60, and Rachel Chandler, 56, from Tunbridge Wells, Kent, briefly stopped in Adado, central Somalia, en route to Mogadishu, and then Kenya.

Mrs Chandler said: “I’m enjoying being free”. The couple appeared to be in good health.

Police in Lebanon have  arrested the radical Muslim cleric, Omar Bakri Muhammad, several days after a military court sentenced him to life in prison.

He was tried in his absence, accused of forming a militant group to weaken Lebanon’s government.

More than eight months after national  elections, Iraq finally has a new government — and it looks a lot like the old one. A parliamentary session Thursday night gave the job of speaker to Osama al-Nujaifi, a Sunni Arab member of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s Iraqiya list. That was the first step of a political deal that saw the legislature re-elect as President Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, who then tapped incumbent Nouri al-Maliki for a second term as Prime Minister. Al-Maliki has 30 days to assemble a Cabinet, a herculean task given the multiple political horse trades and ongoing tensions involved in securing his re-election.

The trial has started of eight officers charged with the murder of prominent human rights activist in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

They are accused of killing Floribert Chebeya, head of the charity Voice of the Voiceless, in June.