WORLD BRIEFS

CUBA: Lawmakers see American prisoner

A U.S. congressional delegation left Cuba on Wednesday after meetings with President Raúl Castro and other officials, but with no sign they had resolved the fate of imprisoned U.S. contractor Alan Gross. The Americans said they were encouraged by the tone of the meetings and indications the Cuban side wanted the dialogue to continue. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said Monday the delegation hoped Gross would fly home with them, but added it was a long shot. He and Rep. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat who represents Gross' district in Maryland, visited him Tuesday at a Havana military hospital, a U.S. diplomat said.

INDIA: Britain won't return giant diamond

British Prime Minister David Cameron says a giant diamond his country forced India to turn over in the colonial era that was set in the crown of Queen Elizabeth I will not be returned. On the third and final day of a visit drumming up trade and investment, Cameron ruled out handing back the 105-carat Koh-i-Noor diamond, displayed in the Tower of London. "I don't think that's the right approach," he said Wednesday after becoming the first serving British minister to voice regret about one of the bloodiest episodes in colonial India, a massacre of unarmed civilians in Amritsar in 1919. Cameron took off his shoes and laid a wreath at the site of the shooting. "This was a deeply shameful event in British history -- one that Winston Churchill rightly described at that time as 'monstrous,' " Cameron wrote in the visitors book at the site in Jallianwala Bagh park.

NIGERIA: Bomb kills 3 civilians; sect blamed

Three civilians were killed Wednesday when a bomb exploded in Maiduguri in the northeast, the army said, the latest attack in the stronghold of Islamist sect Boko Haram. Meanwhile, a French family of three adults and four children kidnapped Tuesday in northern Cameroon was driven into Nigeria by their abductors, Cameroon officials said. French President François Hollande blamed Boko Haram.