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Taliban militants in Afghanistan have released the last three South Korean hostages

Thursday after freeing 16 of the 19 South Korean hostages over the last two days in separate rounds of handovers.

A rebel negotiator told Agence France-Presse that the Taliban had handed over four hostages

to Afghan tribal leaders earlier on Thursday while the remaining three were released later on Thursday afternoon.

An Associated Press reporter who witnessed all three of Wednesday's handovers also saw the

morning handover of two men and two women to the officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross on a road in central Afghanistan's Janda area.

"They (the hostages) are in different locations and we have to bring them to one place before handing them over," said Taliban negotiator Qari Mohammad Bashir, who was involved in a series of meetings with a South Korean delegation to free the aid workers, according to AFP.

South Korean presidential spokesman '%s' said Thursday that once free, the group would head to Kabul before returning home via Dubai, putting an end to a six-week hostage crisis that began with the abduction of the original group of 23 that was travelling by bus in the insurgency-plagued Ghazni province to provide free medical services to poor Afghan citizens.

Since the July 19 abduction – the largest abduction of foreigners in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001 – two male hostages have been killed. The leader of the group, '%1', was found dead on July 25, and the body of 29-year-old '%2' was found July 30. Prior to the latest releases, two females – 37-year-old '%3' and 32-year-old '%4' – were freed on Aug. 13.

The latest releases occurred a day after the Taliban and South Korea struck a deal in which Korea promised to withdraw its 200 troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year and to block South Korean Christian missionaries from working in the country. The rebels had reportedly foregone their original demand for a prisoner exchange.

Although the South Korea presidential spokesman said Tuesday it may take some time before the actual releases take place, the first set of hostages – three women – was released the next day in the village of Qala-e-Kazi and was followed several hours later by the release of one man and four women in a desert close to Shah Baz. As evening approached, four more hostages – one man and three women – were handed over on a main road about 30 miles from Ghazni, according to The Associated Press.

Sammul Presbyterian Church in '%b', South Korea, the home church of the Korean hostages, has identified the 12 released as '%n'.

The identities of the most recently freed hostages have not yet been confirmed.

[Christian Today correspondent '%m' in Washington, USA contributed to this report]

Christians face ongoing intimidation

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"The Protestant community is negatively affected by contemptuous, disinformative media coverage which also has the effect of showing Christians – and in particular persons who have converted to Christianity – as targets for acts of violence," noted a new report released Saturday (September 1) by Turkish Protestants.

Issued by the Legal Committee of the Alliance of Protestant Churches of Turkey, the "summary of concerns" called for the Turkish authorities to create a "culture of tolerance" toward its minorities.

"In the last year, there have been scores of threats or attacks on congregations and church buildings," the report said. "The perpetrators have not been found."

The report concluded, "The State should be guaranteeing freedom of religion and the security of individuals and property."

The incident, which occurred at 3:15 am was recorded on a security camera installed by the church several months ago, in the wake of the gruesome stabbing deaths of three Protestant Christians in Malatya. Sahin walked up to the door of the church, laid down a box and some other flammable materials, poured liquid over the pile and lit it while smoking a cigarette. He then walked off, returning shortly to find the pile burning brightly on the stone steps. Stepping away down the street, he proceeded to shoot off his pistol loaded with blanks into the air several times. Police arrived within several minutes and were soon joined by 10 people from the neighborhood, but the fire was not put out until the fire department came minutes later.

The suspect was apprehended on a nearby street shortly after the incident still carrying the pistol. The church pastor said that police authorities called him at 8 a.m. to inform him of the incident.

Although the fire blackened the entrance and steps to the church, there was no structural damage to the building.

The pastor has been provided with an armed government security guard since the last week of April, when he returned home with his family after his brother-in-law's funeral. On May 20, the testimony of one of the Malatya murder suspects was leaked to the Turkish press, stating that he had planned to murder the Izmit pastor next. The pastor was again targeted in the Turkish media on July 14, when police authorities in Izmit's Kocaeli province reported the round-up of a mafia-style gang of 23 suspects involved in assassinations of businessmen and a rash of other illegal activities in the region. After his capture, gang leader Ismail Halil was interrogated about the group's alleged plans to murder the Izmit pastor in the near future, for which they were to receive $1 million, according to Sabah newspaper. Halil reportedly claimed his legal right to remain silent on this question.

In a previous incident this summer, a group of neighborhood boys plastered the front of the church building with raw eggs on the morning of July 30, just as the church began a week-long English club for its young people.

Police identified the culprits after viewing the security camera footage, bringing them from their homes to clean up the mess.

ISTANBUL– Police in Izmit have arrested a man who set a fire early morning of 3rd September at the entrance of Izmit Protestant church and then shot off his pistol several times. The church's pastor is the brother-in-law of murdered in Malatya in April and has been targeted by Islamic extremists.

Semih Sahin, the man who set fire to the church entrance reportedly told interrogators that he had been "bothered" by what he heard and read in the newspapers about the Izmit Protestant Church, so he wanted to "make a scene" to arouse public attention against it. According to police, who described the apprehended suspect as a "psychopath," Sahin has a previous criminal and prison record. He was brought before a local prosecutor, formally charged and jailed yesterday afternoon.

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All of the passengers and crew from a Turkish plane hijacked earlier on Saturday have been released and the two hijackers have given themselves up, private television NTV reported.
The plane was hijacked as it headed to Istanbul from northern Cyprus and was forced to land in Antalya in southern Turkey.

Earlier reports said the Turkish passenger plane heading for Istanbul from northern Cyprus was hijacked and forced to land in Turkey where most of the 136 passengers were freed but six hostages left behind.

The pilots at that time had left the plane, the Transport Ministry said, and private broadcaster CNN Turk reported that the hijackers were demanding a pilot back on the plane.

It now appears that the four passengers and two crew members that were held hostage have been released.

The plane was forced to land in Antalya on the south coast of Turkey, as it did not have enough fuel to go to Iran as the hijackers wanted.

Doganer told private broadcaster NTV that the earlier release of passengers were freely given by the hijackers or had escaped through the emergency exits.

TV footage showed passengers running from the plane's side and back doors. NTV quoted one witness as saying the hijackers had said they were members of al Qaeda and another as saying they spoke Arabic and wanted to go to Syria. Some witnesses said there was a bomb.

Cyprus, a major tourist destination, is divided between the internationally recognised government in the south and an enclave in the north recognised only by Ankara.

Plane hijacks and bomb threats are not uncommon in Turkey, where a number of radical groups ranging from Kurdish separatists to far-left militants operate. In the last year or so several incidents have been resolved without any passengers being harmed.

DAMASCUS- Iraq on Thursday called for a water treaty with neighbours that share the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, saying a deal was needed to avoid a crisis. The two great rivers converge in Iraq and are its main water resource. Both flow south from Turkey, the Euphrates first winding through Syria while the Tigris passes straight into northern Iraq.

"The problem is growing and we need an agreement. There is speculation that the next regional war will be about water, but more conflict does not achieve anything," Water Resources Minister Abdul Latif Rasheed told Reuters in the Syrian capital.

"Iraq could fall into crisis, especially if we don't have more information from our neighbours and an idea of the state of their projects and if we end up without a fair share of the water," he said.

Rasheed said the looming danger came from Turkey, which has been damming the Euphrates and is expected to add the most land under cultivation, further worsening water quality downstream.

"I hope that the water issue does not fall prey to politics. Our river levels have plummeted and Iraq needs guarantees that projects Turkey is building won't hit us further," Rasheed said after talks with Syrian officials.

Euphrates volumes through Iraq have fallen to 30 billion cubic metres a year, half the flow of a few decades ago before Syria and Turkey increased dam building, Rasheed said.

"The picture on the Tigris is slightly better, although Iran is blocking its tributaries and we need to talk about this with Tehran. We have cooperation from Syria," said Rasheed, a Kurd who was a leading member of the opposition to Saddam Hussein.

Rasheed said talks with Turkey have picked up after the U.S.-led invasion that removed Saddam from power in 2003. But Iraq still lacked information on the scope of Turkish plans upstream and the expansion of cultivated land.

Tension rose recently between Turkey and Iraq over Kurdish separatists operating from Iraqi Kurdistan.

"We're meeting with Turkey over water at all levels, but we need more information and detail. Ideally they should seek our approval for some of their projects," Rasheed said.

Water resources have long been the centre of disputes between Turkey and the downstream countries, especially after the completion of the Ataturk dam in the 1990s.

Turkey said then its neighbours had no right to question what Ankara did with rivers rising within its borders but that it would not use its control of the Tigris and Euphrates as a weapon against Syria and Iraq.

New Turkish President Abdullah Gul approved a pro-EU reformist cabinet on Wednesday which reflected Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's aim to push ahead with stalled political and economic reforms needed to join the bloc.

Gul, who as foreign minister helped Turkey win EU accession talks status in 2005, is the first politician with a background in political Islam to become president in mainly Muslim but constitutionally secular Turkey, over the army's opposition.

After meeting Gul at the presidential palace, Erdogan named Ali Babacan as Gul's successor as foreign minister. Babacan will remain in his role as chief negotiator in the membership talks.

Kemal Unakitan remains in the post of finance minister, while former banker Nazim Ekren was named minister in charge of coordinating economic issues, an important position as the government pushes for further economic reforms.

"I prepared the new cabinet as a team who have the skills to realise our goals for the coming period ... I believe we formed a strong team," Erdogan told reporters.

The ruling AK Party won a sweeping victory in parliamentary polls in July but was unable to form a new government because of objections by Gul's secularist predecessor Ahmet Necdet Sezer.

Turks will closely follow the military's reaction to Gul after its top brass snubbed his swearing-in ceremony on Tuesday. The military elite fears his presidency will lead to a creeping subversion of the secular order.

Turkey's military considers itself the ultimate guardian of the secular republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and has ousted four governments in the past 60 years. Its last such move was as recently as 1997, against a government it considered too Islamist, in which Gul was a minister.

Members of the worldwide ecumenical family have expressed support and solidarity to the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew as the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople - today's Istanbul - is facing growing hardships imposed by the Turkish judiciary.

On 26 June a ruling by Turkey's Supreme Court of Appeals contested the ecumenical standing of the Patriarchate, stating that it is a religious body only authorised to perform religious functions for the Greek Orthodox minority in the country.

The court also ruled that the Patriarchate does not have any legal personality and that the Patriarch is not allowed to bear the title "ecumenical".

The ruling stated that the Patriarch as well as the Patriarchate officers are subject to Turkish law regarding their titles and activities. On 21 August, Bartholomew was summoned to testify before a prosecuting authority in Istanbul on his use of the title "Ecumenical" at a world conference of Orthodox youth that took place in the city a few weeks earlier.

In the face of these developments, on 27 August the Conference of European Churches (CEC) expressed its "strong support" for the right of the Patriarch to use of the title "Ecumenical".

In a letter addressed to Bartholomew, CEC's general secretary, the Venerable Colin Williams, wrote: "We could think of no other church leader in Europe who is so naturally recognised as a key figure in the ecumenical aspirations of the [continent's] churches."

On 29 August a similar letter addressed to Bartholomew by the World Council of Churches (WCC) General Secretary, the Rev Dr Samuel Kobia, expressed the Council's "whole-hearted appreciation of the authenticity and importance of the Ecumenical Patriarchate as an institution and the Ecumenical Patriarch as an office within the wider church world".

In his letter, Kobia conveyed to the Patriarch the WCC's "firm support" and reaffirmed Bartholomew's "ecumenical standing" while cherishing his "leadership in the global ecumenical movement".

BRUSSELS - The European Union's regional policy chief will visit Greece on Friday to assess how much financial aid the bloc can award to help deal with the damage caused by the country's worst forest fires in decades.

Regional Policy Commissioner Danuta Huebner will study how Greece can tap the EU's 1 billion euro ($1.36 billion) Solidarity Fund, which helps member states reconstruct after major natural disasters, two European Commission officials said.

The fires have ravaged Greece and yesterday engulfed a Greek Orthodox church in Thisoa village in central Peloponnese, some 250 km southwest of Athens.

"Commissioner Huebner wants to see the extent of the damage herself. The Greeks will have to apply for aid from the Solidarity Fund themselves," one official told Reuters.

It is too early to say how much Greece could get, but the sum is likely to be large, another official said. In 2002, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic and France shared 728 million euros of EU cash to counter damage from summer floods.

Greek firefighters on Wednesday gained the upper hand over forest fires that have killed at least 63 people and left the government shaken by accusations of incompetence.

The European Commission, the EU executive, was discussing the disaster at its first meeting after the summer holidays on Wednesday.

South Korea's presidential spokesman '&P' speaks to the media during a news briefing regarding the South Korean hostages in Afghanistan at the Presidential Blue House in Seoul August 28, 2007....

The Taliban has agreed to release the 19 South Korean hostages held in Afghanistan in return for the withdrawal of South Korean troops from the country before the end of the year, Al Jazeera television has reported.

The Qatar-based channel said it had received the report from its Kabul correspondent:“There was an agreement between the Taliban and a South Korean delegation to release the hostages in return for the withdrawal of the troops before the end of the year.”

A South Korean presidential spokesman has confirmed the reports but has added that many details still had to be worked out, and that it may take some time before the actual release takes place.

The Taliban reportedly only agreed to the release after South Korea agreed to meet other conditions such as halting its citizens from conducting any Christian missionary activity in the Middle Eastern country.

Under the terms of the agreement, South Korea's 200 non-combat troops in Afghanistan, mostly operating in an engineering and medical capacity, will be withdrawn.

A spokesman for the Taliban, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, has said negotiations were "successful", however, he would not elaborate when asked to comment on the release of the hostages.

The Taliban till now had insisted that the Korean hostages would only be released after Kabul had freed jailed Taliban members.

Taliban and South Korean negotiators were expected to resume talks on Tuesday, following a collapse in negotiations nearly two weeks ago after the Korean team told the Taliban it could not fulfil the group's main demand to free Taliban prisoners jailed by the Afghan Government.

The Taliban Islamic movement kidnapped the 23 Korean Christian aid volunteers on 19 July as they travelled by bus in Ghazni province.

The group has so far killed two male hostages after issuing a series of deadlines, but has also freed two female captives as a gesture of goodwill during the first round of talks.

A plug adapter that stops energy being wasted by electrical devices left on standby is to go on sale priced £9.99.

Known as the SMJ Energy Saving Plug Adapter, the gadget stops energy being wasted when televisions and other electrical goods are left on standby instead of being turned off.

Laura Yates, climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace gave mixed response: "Standby's got to go, but in the meantime it's great news that these energy saving plug adapters are now available."

Negotiations are also under way to launch a similar device known as the 'Standby Saver' which featured on the BBC's television show 'Dragons' Den' - click here to see the show.