London: BMW introduces new Rolls-Royce

The new Rolls-Royce, with its familiar Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament — but the guts of a BMW — made its first public appearance Friday since the German automaker bought the legendary brand name. The big car lived up to another Rolls-Royce tradition as well: a whopping price tag of $333,000.

With its instantly recognizable radiator grill and a 6.8-liter V-12 engine that propels it from zero to 60 mph in 5.7 seconds, the new car — known as the Phantom, above — stretches 19 feet, 2 inches.

Weighing 5,478 pounds, the new Rolls-Royce features a six-speed transmission and average fuel economy of 17.1 miles per gallon.

Rolls-Royce will give the public a first close-up look Monday at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit — a venue that emphasizes the importance of the U.S. market. The company hopes to sell a thousand cars a year, 400 of them in the United States.

Rolls-Royce has been a German-owned brand since 1998.

Washington: U.S. not worried about leftist ‘axis’

The Bush administration on Friday brushed aside suggestions that Brazil’s new leftist president is ready to form an alliance with leaders from Venezuela and Cuba.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva displayed friendship toward Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Fidel Castro of Cuba in the aftermath of Silva’s inauguration on Wednesday.

Chavez has even dubbed the troika a Latin American “axis of good.” Silva had breakfast with Chavez on Thursday and dinner with Castro that night. Beforehand, Castro said Lula’s election augured well for Cuban-Brazilian relations.

Responding to the suggestion of an axis unfriendly to the United States being formed, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, “Let’s get serious. These are three different leaders with different nations and different interests.”

Honolulu: Army seeks remains of WWII servicemen

An Army team will travel to Papua New Guinea next week to search for the remains of nine servicemen aboard a B-24 bomber that crashed in a rain forest during World War II, officials said Friday.

The bomber is believed to be from the Army Air Corps’ 360th Service Group that left Nabzab, New Guinea — about 15 miles from the crash site — on a training mission and disappeared in October 1944. Onboard was a pilot, co-pilot, navigator, bombardier, aerial engineer, radio operator and three gunners.

The names of the crew members were not released by the military.

A hunter came across the crash site in the mountains of Lae Morobe Province. Investigators from the Army’s Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii visited the site in November and discovered human remains and personal effects.

A full team from the lab will spend two months at the site. The remains will be returned to the Army lab at Hickam Air Force Base.

Kenya: President to help search for genocide suspect

Kenya’s new president, Mwai Kibaki, promised Friday to help the United States hunt down Felicien Kabuga, one of the most wanted suspects in the Rwandan genocide. The pledge came three days after U.S. officials accused a senior bureaucrat in Kenya’s former government of harboring him.

Kabuga, an alleged architect and financier of the genocide, is accused of supplying hoes and machetes to the ethnic Hutus who massacred 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994. He also funded Radio Mille Collines, which goaded Hutus into massacring the Tutsis and was dubbed “the voice of genocide.”

Last year, the United States offered up to $5 million for information leading to the arrest of Kabuga and other suspected “genocidaires.”

Nearly nine years after the slaughter, the powerful 66-year-old Hutu businessman has managed to elude capture, jetting from European cities to African capitals, using his wealth and well-connected friends to seek refuge.

Ivory Coast: President vows to cease hostilities with rebels

President Laurent Gbagbo pledged Friday to cease hostilities and send home foreign mercenaries fighting with loyalist troops in Ivory Coast.

“We will abstain from all acts of war on all fronts,” Gbagbo told reporters after meeting French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin. “We will immobilize our helicopters and keep our men in the positions they are holding, because in the end we want peace.”

The main rebel faction quickly dismissed the pledge, saying Gbagbo’s forces already have broken an October cease-fire several times.

“He said this to mislead the French and international opinion,” rebel leader Guillaume Soro said by telephone from their stronghold of Bouake. “It’s too good to be true.”

London: Views on homosexuality upset evangelical groups

Evangelical groups in the Church of England, angered by the new archbishop of Canterbury’s views on homosexuality, said Friday they would consider looking abroad for alternative spiritual leadership.

Rowan Williams, who took office last month as head of the Church of England, has publicly backed homosexuals in the church and acknowledged ordaining a practicing gay man in the Anglican priesthood.

The Church Society and the Reform, the two main conservative evangelical groups, say the archbishop of Sydney, Dr. Peter Jensen, is one contender for alternative leadership.

Venezuela: Two killed as troops break up protests

Street protests escalated in violence Friday as police struggled to separate battling supporters and opponents of President Hugo Chavez. At least two people were shot to death and 78 others injured in a melee that spread through the Venezuelan capital.

The violence erupted when several hundred supporters of the president threw rocks, bottles and fireworks at thousands of opposition marchers and police in Los Proceres park, outside Caracas’ Fort Tiuna.

Anti-Chavez marchers were demanding the release of a dissident national guard general and urging the military to support a 5-week-old strike aimed at forcing Chavez to hold a nonbinding vote on his leadership.

Opposition leaders blame Chavez’s leftist policies for deep economic troubles and accuse him of grabbing power. The president counters the opposition wants to stage an “economic coup.”

The strike has paralyzed oil production in Venezuela, the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter.