Britain All striking staff at British Airways are returning to work Friday, and the company is resuming flights with "a limited number of aircraft" from Heathrow airport at 8:00 pm (1900 GMT), BA said. Commodities Oil prices hit a record 67.10 dollars in New York and smashed through an historic 66 dollars in London this week on US refinery outages, while the world's appetite for energy showed no signs of abating. Iraq Iraq's ousted Sunni Arab elite expressed anger after the country's Shiite majority made a surprise move towards Kurdish-style autonomy, just days before a crucial deadline for agreement on a new constitution. Mideast Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he had no regrets about his plan to pull settlers out of the Gaza Strip from next week as the radical Palestinian group Hamas ruled out disarming after the withdrawal. Britain Britain banned radical cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed from returning to its shores as pitched legal battles loomed over a bid to deport 10 other foreign Islamists in the aftermath of the London bombings. Turkey Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged that the Kurdish conflict in Turkey would be resolved with "more democracy" despite a marked increase in violence by Kurdish rebels whom Ankara considers "terrorists." US Lawyers defending Moroccan national Mounir el Motassadeq at his retrial over the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States demanded his acquittal as the high-profile case headed into its final week. US NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) blasted off into space atop an Atlas V rocket, bound for a 25-month mission to survey the Red Planet. Malaysia Anger over Indonesia's inability to douse forest fires which have smothered parts of Malaysia with a dangerous haze mounted as the crisis worsened in the capital Kuala Lumpur. Russia Ceremonies took place across Russia marking the fifth anniversary of the sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk with the loss of all 118 aboard, a traumatising accident that shattered the nation's trust in its leaders. Nepal A UN official said Nepal's Maoist rebels had promised him they would treat humanely dozens of soldiers captured in a deadly clash with security forces last weekend.