A retired British couple snatched last year from their sailboat by pirates could be released within weeks as Somali communities inside and outside the East African country work for their freedom, a Somali official said Friday.

People raced into the streets in pajamas as a magnitude-6.0 aftershock struck Concepcion shortly before dawn.

DEVELOPING — Magnitude 6.8 quake hits southwest of Sumatra.

A sumo wrestler ripped a cash machine out of a Moscow store on Friday, walking off with the bulky 200-pound machine on his shoulders, police said.

Given a semi-public spanking a year ago for his efforts, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon is once again trying to put forward an accountability code — but he’s already facing a broadside from the world body’s oversight committee.

Maritime officials say pirates have clashed with private security and military personnel in three separate incidents off the Somali coast in the latest indicator of rising pirate attacks.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown insisted Friday that Britain’s Armed Forces were sufficiently equipped prior to the Iraq invasion in 2003.

Rescuers raced against the clock as quake victims trapped in a toppled apartment block early Sunday even as looters stole food and robbed banks after one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded struck Chile.

More than 2,000 U.S. Marines and about 1,000 Afghan troops who stormed the Taliban town of Marjah as part of a major NATO offensive against a resurgent Taliban will stay for the next several months.

When the boss of Fox News, Roger Ailes, was recently asked by the New York Times what made his conservative news channel such a ratings winner, he thundered back: “I built this channel from my life experience … my first qualification…