In the World

ROME - Italy returned more than 200 migrants rescued in the Mediterranean Sea to Libya yesterday, defying the U.N. refugee agency but claiming a major victory in its crackdown on illegal immigration.

The 227 migrants were brought back to Tripoli aboard two coast guard boats and a border police boat without having set foot on Italian soil, Francesco Maugeri, a customs and border police commander, said from the Sicilian island of Lampedusa.

Interior Minister Roberto Maroni called the operation a historic "turning point" in Italy's crackdown on illegal immigration made possible because of an agreement signed with Libya, from where the boat started.

The agreement allows Italy to send back migrants who leave from Libyan coasts and are intercepted before reaching Italian shores, the ministry said in a statement.

- AP

LONDON - Britain bowed to a court ruling and promised yesterday to remove the DNA records of hundreds of thousands of innocent people from its vast national database of genetic information - but many will have to wait up to 12 years for their details to be deleted.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said that under the new proposals, authorities would delete after six years the DNA profiles of people who are arrested but not convicted of most "recordable offenses" - a category that includes everything from robbery to refusing to take a breath test.

Those arrested for serious crimes, including sexual violence and terrorism, but not charged, or those charged and acquitted, must wait 12 years.

Critics accused the government of flouting the spirit of a European Court of Human Rights ruling and undermining the legal presumption of innocence in British law. - AP

BAGHDAD - The American security firm once known as Blackwater ended its operations in the diplomatic hub of Baghdad yesterday, bringing to a close a bitter chapter in U.S.-Iraqi relations that began with a deadly shooting by its contractors.

Iraqis welcomed the departure from the capital of the company, which has protected American diplomats in Iraq since the start of the war in 2003. The company, which has changed its name to Xe, will continue to have guards in some southern areas and to run its aviation service and through September.

The end of the firm's Baghdad operations comes nearly two years after the Iraqi government first demanded it leave after the September 2007 shooting on a busy square in central Baghdad that left as many as 17 Iraqi civilians dead.

Blackwater guards will remain protecting American diplomats in the predominantly Shiite cities of Hillah, Najaf, and Karbala, all south of Baghdad, until Aug. 4, according to the State Department.

- AP

The Sudanese government said yesterday that it would consider applications from American aid organizations to replace more than a dozen groups that were expelled from Darfur earlier this year.