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COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lankan troops continued their offensive against Tamil Tiger rebels in two days of fighting in the north that killed 66 Tigers and eight soldiers, the military said on Saturday.

LAGOS (Reuters) - Gunmen kidnapped eight foreign oil workers from a vessel off Nigeria's Niger Delta early on Saturday, bringing to 16 the number of industry workers seized in the past 48 hours, security sources said.

HAVANA (Reuters) - President Raul Castro will mark the 55th anniversary of the start of the Cuban revolution on Saturday with a speech to a nation waiting to hear how far and how fast he plans to go in reforming the island's struggling state-run economy.

PALE, Bosnia (Reuters) - Hundreds of people gathered to pray for Radovan Karadzic across the Serb half of Bosnia on Saturday, holding vigils inside churches or marching in protest at his arrest on war crimes charges.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Couples whose only child was killed or seriously injured in the May 12 Sichuan province earthquake may have another, winning an exemption from China's strict family planning rules, the China Daily said on Saturday.

LONDON (Reuters) - The woman who filmed motor racing chief Max Mosley taking part in a sado-masochistic orgy and sold the story to a British tabloid newspaper has apologized for the trouble it caused.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese authorities denied claims by a group calling itself the Turkistan Islamic Party that it was responsible for deadly bus explosions in Shanghai and Yunnan province ahead of the Olympic Games, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday.

TRIPOLI, Lebanon (Reuters) - The Lebanese army deployed on Saturday to halt two days of heavy sectarian fighting in the northern city of Tripoli which medical sources said had killed nine people.

GAZA (Reuters) - Hamas security forces stormed the office of a Palestinian news agency run by President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday and arrested dozens from his Fatah faction in their biggest crackdown since seizing Gaza, Fatah sources said.

AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) - At least 16 small bombs exploded in the Indian city of Ahmedabad on Saturday, killing at least 29 people and wounding 88, a day after another set of blasts in the country's IT hub, officials said.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan is fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban for its own interests, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said on Saturday as he embarked on his first official visit to the United States.

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan is aiming to open five sectors of its economy to mainland Chinese by the end of the year, as part of a campaign by a new China-friendly administration to boost growth, media reported on Saturday.

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States, responding to a key demand of developing countries, said on Saturday it would discuss giving more temporary access to foreign professionals, injecting renewed optimism into world trade talks.

MADRID (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Spain's King Juan Carlos shook hands and made up on Friday in their first meeting since the monarch told the president to "shut up" at a summit in November.

VIENNA (Reuters) - Radovan Karadzic evaded capture last year when Austrian police raided a Vienna apartment where he was staying but did not recognize the disguised war crimes suspect, an Austrian newspaper reported on Friday.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Kosovo's foreign minister said on Friday he was ready for direct talks with Serbia, but his Serbian counterpart said Belgrade would not talk with a "secessionist" government.

N'DJAMENA (Reuters) - Chadian rebels have freed a U.S. missionary after holding him hostage for more than nine months in the remote north of the central African country, his U.S. evangelical organization said on Friday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A group calling itself the Turkistan Islamic Party released a video threatening the Beijing Olympic Games and claiming responsibility for recent deadly explosions on two Chinese buses, a terrorism monitoring firm said on Friday.

MADRID (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Spain's King Juan Carlos shook hands and made up on Friday in their first meeting since the monarch told the president to "shut up" at a summit in November.

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - A Darfur rebel faction that has a pact with Sudan's government accused the army on Friday of bombing a village this week even while President Omar Hassan al-Bashir was in the region making a call for peace.