CIA to increase its global spy force: stung by its failure in predicting Indian nuclear tests in May 1998 the ' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has approved plans to increase its global spy force by 30 per cent over the next seven years, the Washington Post reported Tuesday quoting top agency officials. PTI reports from Washington.

. ’The,Directorate .of Operation's exact size is classified but it ‘ is thought to have about 5,000 employees including about 1.000. ■ overseas operations officers, the spies who recruit and handle foreign agents and manage intelligence collection," the paper said quoting officials.

Kidnapping ring broken in Argentina: Argentine police said Tuesday they have broken up a ring that was kidnapping babies and selling them, mostly to Germans. AFP reports from Buenos Aires.

Police conducted about 10 raids Monday night in suburbs south of here, mainly on clinics and doctors’ offices that were operating illegally. Doctors In the ring would help women through childbirth and then tell them their babies had died, when in reality they were kidnapping the babies and selling them, police told the private Argentine news agency DyN.

British woman held in Myanmar: ihe British Foreign Office confirmed Tuesday that a British woman had been arrested by military police in Myanmar. AFP reports from London.

According to a Myanmar dissidents' group in London, Rachel Goldwyn. 28. of London, was arrested for singing a revolutionary song at a pro-democracy demonstration in the Myanmar capital Yangon. The Foreign Office said it was seeking access to Goldwyn, a researcher at the Democratic Burmese Students' Organisation (UK), but did not expect clarification of the circumstances surrounding her arrest until yesterday.

2 Afghans killed on Tajik border: Russian border guard fired on a group of Afghan drug smuggle rs yesterday, killing two on the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan, the border guard command said. AFP reports from Dushanbe. The incident took place 200 km southwest of the Tajik capital Dushanbe. Three of the drug traffickers fled, escaping into the mountainous region.