International

By IANS, Mogadishu : At least 18 people were killed and 25 wounded after fighting erupted between Islamist fighters and Somali government forces in Mogadishu Friday, officials said. The clashes broke out in the southwestern district of Dharkinley after Islamist fighters attacked soldiers' positions in an area which is part of the Somali government-controlled side of the capital, Xinhua reported. The officials said that the dead and the injured include civilians as well as combatants from both sides.

Jerusalem: Israeli security forces have been put on high alert after a Palestinian teenager, who was critically wounded during a protest in east Jerusalem...

By Xinhua Washington : At least four people have been killed when their small plane crashed in Florida's Martin County region, the police said. According to officials, three of the dead are from the Florida Atlantic University. The fourth victim was the pilot. After reports of the crash came in at 9.04 a.m. Thursday, fire-fighters were rushed to the scene, who found a Cessna Skyhawk aircraft lying upside down near a stand of trees, with four bodies inside.

By IANS/RIA Novosti, Chita (Russia): A former World junior archery champion has been killed by electric shock, police said Tuesday.

By Arun Kumar,IANS,

Zurich : India on Thursday dropped 15 places to be 156th in the latest FIFA rankings while Copa America runners-up Argentina moved up two...

By IANS, New York : India's IT hub Bangalore has been rated the country's best city to live in on this year's global list but at 142 it falls far behind the leader, Austrian capital Vienna, in the chart comparing standard of living. At 145, New Delhi is the second best Indian city to live in. Mumbai, which was at 142 last year in the list prepared by global consultants Mercer, has slipped to 148 in 2009. The Quality of Living Report 2009, which has ranked 215 cities, says: "Terrorist attacks in Mumbai have led to the city's decline in quality of living for expatriates."

By NNN-Xinhua,

By DPA, New York : US stocks finished the year with gains Wednesday as weekly unemployment figures dropped, but Wall Street still ended the year with its steepest slide since the Great Depression. Unemployment claims fell by 94,000 this week, the lowest level in two months, Bloomberg financial news reported.

By IANS,

By DPA, Thessaloniki (Greece) : Thousands of people marched in the northern port city of Thessaloniki Saturday to protest the ruling conservative government's austere economic reforms ahead of elections next month. More than 10,000 people marched through downtown Thessaloniki towards the International Trade Fair where Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis was giving a speech on the state of the economy. Karamanlis, whose conservative administration has been plagued with scandals, called a snap general election Oct 4, which was needed to deal with the economic downturn.

Taipei : Taiwaness Prime Minister Jiang Yi-hua and his entire government resigned Monday following the ruling party Kuomintang's crushing defeat in local elections where...

By IANS, Washington: Urging Congress to pass his $447 billion jobs bill without further delay, US President Barack Obama Thursday said the US economy needs an immediate "jolt".

Lisbon(DPA) : European Union (EU) leaders signed a landmark treaty designed to improve the way the organization functions during a ceremony in Lisbon Thursday. The 250-page text was signed by all of the EU's 27 prime ministers or heads of state and foreign ministers except Gordon Brown. The British premier had to delay his arrival in the Portuguese capital due to "long-standing diary commitments" in London but was expected to add his signature to the text in the afternoon.

By Xinhua, Phnom Penh : Cambodia has requested an emergency meeting of the United Nations (UN) Security Council to break a military standoff with neighboring Thailand over disputed frontier territory around the Preah Vihear Temple, Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong said here on Tuesday.

By IANS/RIA Novosti, Moscow : A volcano in northern Russia has erupted, and is churning out ash to a height of 10,000 metres, scientists said Friday.

By IANS, Sydney : Australian mining magnate Ken Talbot is among nine people feared dead after their aircraft went missing in west Africa. Talbot Group chairman Don Nissen confirmed Sunday that Talbot was aboard an aircraft chartered by West Australian iron ore miner Sundance Resources that went missing in Cameroon Saturday, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. Most of those on board the plane are connected to Sundance Resources. "Sundance Resources regrets to advise that an aircraft chartered by the company has been reported missing Saturday," a statement from the company said.

By IANS/EFE, San Jose : Over 6,300 women in Costa Rica have Maria Rodriguez as their names, prompting the Costa Rican government to produce a documentary based on their lives. The documentary follows the daily lives of five women named Maria Rodriguez, and even held a meeting asking all women of that name to gather here in the capital city during the weekend.

By DPA, Denver (Colorado) : The presence of Hispanic Congressional leaders at the Democratic convention kick-off here underlined the centre-left party's renewed push for votes in the Republican-leaning Mountain West region. A key factor in holding the convention in Denver was to help pursue the growing number of Hispanic voters in the Rocky Mountain state and in nearby New Mexico and Nevada. Florida is also a key battleground in the Hispanic strategy for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who will accept the party's nomination Thursday.

By IANS/EFE, Caracas, April 30 (IANS/EFE) An American Catholic priest has been stabbed to death in Venezuela's Bolivar state, officials said. Esteban Woods, 68, of Vancouver, Washington, had been serving as a priest in Venezuela for the past eight years and was the pastor of the Holy Family Church in Puerto Ordaz, the Venezuelan Attorney General's Office said in a statement Thursday. "We found him gagged and stabbed on the floor of his room," Miguel Angel Garcia, pastor of the Our Lady of Coromoto Church, was quoted as saying by Union Radio Thursday.

By Xinhua, Changsha (China) : At least 17 workers were killed and one was seriously injured when a lift crashed at a construction site in central China's Hunan province Saturday. The accident occurred at about 7.30 a.m. at the construction site of a real estate project named "Shanghai City" in downtown Changsha, the provincial capital, according to the municipal government. Further details were not immediately available. The project was being developed by Hunan-based Dongfanghong construction group, which was established in 1965. The injured have been sent to hospital.

By Xinhua, Yangon : Myanmar has given polio vaccination to 540 cyclone-survived children under five years of age in relief camps in Laputta, one of the disaster-hard-hit townships in southwestern Ayeyawaddy delta, state media reported Monday. Another 720 children ranging from 9 months to 10 years of age were also given measles vaccination, said the New Light of Myanmar. A total of 770 storm victims of Kanback native village have also moved back from relief camps, the report added.

By IANS, Washington : African-American girls using marijuana are more likely to engage in risky sexual acts and contract sexually transmitted disease, according to a new study. Emory University researchers analysed marijuana use and self-reported sexual behaviour of 439 sexually active African-American females between the ages of 15 and 21. They found that girls who took marijuana had significantly higher rates of STDs than non-marijuana users (32 percent compared to 23 percent).

By IANS, Los Angeles: Actress Scarlett Johansson never thinks about her marriage because she realised a successful relationship doesn't necessarily have to mean being married.

By NNN-PNA, Cha-Am, Hua Hin, Thailand : The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will create next year a special body that will be tasked to protect the rights of women and children in the region. Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva bared this Friday shortly after the inauguration of the Asean Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR), which marked the first day of the three-day 15th ASEAN Summit and Related Summits being held here in southern Thailand.

By DPA, Washington : The US space shuttle Discovery began its earthward journey Wednesday after completing a 14-day mission to carry out further construction and maintenance work on the International Space Station (ISS). The shuttle is scheduled for landing Saturday at the Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Caneveral, Florida. Discovery undocked from the ISS for the return journey after a mission in which astronauts carried out three spacewalks chiefly devoted to installing and preparing the Japanese scientific laboratory module Kibo.

By IANS, London : The Loomba Trust, which started its initiative to help poor widows and their children in India, has now extended its help to 850 widows in Rwanda. The project, launched in partnership with international charity Oxfam and the Rwandan government, includes 500 survivors of the 1994 mass genocide in Rwanda in central Africa. The mission is headed by Cherie Blair, the trust's president and wife of former British prime minister Tony Blair, and Raj Loomba, the London-based NRI businessman who began the trust in the memory of his mother who had a difficult time as a widow.

By Xinhua, Kathmandu : Nepali Congress (NC), the second largest party in the Constituent Assembly (CA), has decided to stay in opposition, local leading news website eKantipur reported on Wednesday. On Wednesday, top NC leaders took the decision to stay in opposition, but to file the nomination of the candidate for the election of the Prime Minister of the new government which has been scheduled for Friday, at a meeting held in capital Kathmandu.

By Anil Giri, Kathmandu : India Sunday announced $1-billion line of credit to Nepal as Prime Minister Narendra Modi embarked on a two-day official visit...

By IANS Moscow : The European Commission plans to allocate 20 million euros (over $27 million) for nuclear safety projects in Russia, the country's nuclear power plant operator said Thursday. Rosenergoatom, which runs all 10 Russian nuclear power plants with a total capacity of over 23 gigawatts, said the funds offered by the European Union's (EU) executive branch aimed at optimising their preventive maintenance.

By SPA Nairobi, Kenya : Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan was due in Kenya on Tuesday to mediate a dispute over the country's presidential election, which triggered riots and ethnic fighting that killed more than 600 people, according to a report of the Associated Press. The Dec. 27 election returned President Mwai Kibaki to power for a second five-year term, with official results putting opposition leader Raila Odinga second in the closest presidential race in Kenya's history.

By DPA, Madrid: Spain will do its best to encourage Turkey's entry into the European Union during its EU-presidency in the first half of 2010, government sources said Monday. King Juan Carlos discussed Turkey's relations with the EU with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who was visiting Madrid Monday. On Sunday, Davutoglu met his Spanish counterpart Miguel Angel Moratinos, who told him Spain would encourage negotiations on Turkey's eventual EU membership.

By Arun Kumar, IANS, Washington : The capital of the world's most powerful nation lay paralysed for the fourth day as another massive snowstorm barrelled into the mid-Atlantic region even as residents were still recovering from the weekend's historic blizzard. Federal workers and schoolchildren in Washington were told to stay home for a third consecutive day with fresh snowfall that began Tuesday afternoon expected to dump another 10 to 20 inches of snow over Washington, northern Virginia and eastern Maryland through Wednesday.

By IANS, Colombo : A top visiting UN envoy Thursday expressed concern over civilian casualties in Sri Lanka's north where thousands of Tamil civilians are caught in fierce clashes between the troops and the Tamil Tigers. "The UN is concerned over the civilian casualties in the war-zone. We urge the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) to respect the international humanitarian laws," John Holmes, UN under secretary general on Humanitarian Affairs said here Thursday.

Taipei : One of the two reactors of a nuclear power station in Taiwan was shut down after a fire broke out on Sunday...

By IANS/RIA Novosti, Kiev : A court in Ukraine Thursday sentenced a former defence minister to five years in jail for abuse of office.

By IANS, Washington : Hurricanes in some areas, including the North Atlantic, are likely to become more intense as a result of global warming even though the number of such storms decline, according to a study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers. Kerry Emanuel, the study's co-author, wrote a paper in 2005 reporting an apparent link between a warming climate and an increase in hurricane intensity. That paper drew worldwide attention because it appeared in Nature just three weeks before Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans.

By IANS, Washington : Over 1,500 women from Venezuela who had breast implants made by a now bankrupt French company are taking legal action to secure money for replacement surgery, CNN reported.

By IANS, New Delhi : A UN Security Council without India as a permanent member is an "anachronism" as are bodies like the IMF and the World Bank, former British prime minister Tony Blair said Saturday and then added a caveat: “with power comes responsibility”. "A UNSC without India as a permanent member is an anachronism. An IMF or a World Bank without a proper role for India will no longer do," Blair said while addressing the HT Leadership Summit here on "Leadership in a Globalised World".

Beijing: A group named Turkestan Islamic Party has claimed responsibility for the attack in Urumqi train station in northwest China, in which three people...

Sydney : Australian west coast was hit by tropical cyclone Olwyn on Friday as it made landfall in Exmouth town. Over 1,400 residents were without...

Nairobi, Dec 18 (DPA) A UN tribunal Thursday sentenced former Rwandan Army colonel Theoneste Bagosora to life in prison for helping to organise the 1994 genocide in the east African country. Bagosora, who was the Director of Cabinet in the defence ministry at the time of the genocide, faced 12 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

By Prensa Latina Dili : New Zealand Defense Minister Phil Goff promised Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao on Tuesday that his country's troops will remain in Timor Leste to contribute to keep security in that island, as he affirmed. New Zealand has 180 men and women enrolled in its Air and Armed Forces deployed in Eastern Timor Leste where the government has extended state of exception for another month Since Monday. Australia, Malaysia and Portugar are also included in the troops under the NATO command.

Somerset West (South Africa), May 13 (IANS) There can be no meaningful reform of global democracy if the UN and the Security Council is not reformed, the foreign ministers of India, Brazil and South Africa said here at the end of the Fifth Meeting of the Trilateral Commission of the IBSA Dialogue Forum.

By IANS/RIA Novosti, Moscow: Russia's new reusable spacecraft being developed by the Energia Rocket and Space Corporation will be able to make up to five space flights, the rocket maker said.

By IANS, London : Water, the most abundant liquid on earth, exhibits some unusual chemical properties when placed under extreme conditions. It can even trigger explosions. Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL) in California have shown that water, in hot dense environments, plays an unexpected role in catalysing complex explosive reactions. A catalyst is a compound that speeds chemical reactions without being consumed. Platinum and enzymes are common catalysts but water rarely, if ever, acts as a catalyst under ordinary conditions.

By IANS/RIA Novosti,

By Mike McCarthy, DPA, Washington : President Barack Obama has sharply altered the tone of US diplomacy as his first year in office comes to close, a move that has been broadly welcomed but produced few tangible results. Obama's talk of support for a multilateral approach has won him praise abroad after eight years of George W. Bush's perceived unilateralism. This approach got him the Nobel Peace Prize, but little achievement on foreign policy objectives. "I don't think they have very much to show for it," said John Pike, an analyst at Globalsecurity.org.

By DPA Warsaw : Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski will dissolve the country's coalition government Monday, Deputy premier and coalition partner Roman Giertych said Saturday. Law and Justice (PiS) party leader Kaczynski spoke of the decision in a meeting with him, said Giertych, chairman of the nationalist League of Polish Families (LPR) and education minister in Kaczynski's cabinet.

By Xinhua, Jakarta : Nearly 10,000 people have been displaced after a strong earthquake rocked Sulawesi Island in the eastern part of Indonesia, Health Ministry said Tuesday. The shallow quake with magnitude 7.5 struck after midnight on Monday with epicenter at 138 km northwest of Gorontalo city and at10 km in depth, meteorology agency said. The agency issued warning of tsunami but then lifted it. The quake was then followed by two moderate aftershocks of 6.0 and 5.7magnitudes, the agency said.

By IANS, Washington : The California Supreme Court has upheld a Los Angeles International Airport ordinance barring Hare Krishnas from soliciting donations inside airport terminals. "Soliciting the immediate receipt of funds at a busy international airport like Los Angeles is particularly problematic," the court said Thursday in a ruling written by Justice Carlos Moreno. "The problems posed by solicitations for the immediate receipt of funds that arise in any public place would be exacerbated in the often crowded and hectic environment of a large international airport."

Tunis : Vice President Hamid Ansari on Friday said that India has a much larger role to play in charting a more equitable and...

Moscow : The escalation of conflict in Ukraine has brought the country to the verge of civil war, Kremlin said in a statement Wednesday. Russian...

By DPA, Washington : US President Barack Obama announced Thursday the US was providing an initial $100 million in aid to Haiti as military and civilian rescue teams arrived on the ground to search for survivors of the massive earthquake. Obama called the Tuesday afternoon quake that struck Haiti "nothing less than devastating" and instructed all departments of the US government to make the rescue effort a top priority.

By EFE, Santiago : Chilean companies are required to pay men and women the same wage for doing the same job, thanks to the equal-pay law that came into effect Saturday. "Nothing justifies a woman being paid less than a man for doing the same work," the minister of the national woman's service (Sernam), Carmen Andrade, said Saturday when presenting the statute.

By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS Kathmandu : Stripped of his enormous powers and now living under the shadow of a trust formed to take over the royal property he inherited from his slain brother, Nepal's cornered King Gyanendra now has a new source of concern - whether or not to attend weddings. Earlier accustomed to being given pride of place at all the weddings he chose to grace along with Queen Komal, the king now has to think about all the implications first before deciding to attend a wedding party.

By Xinhua, Beijing : China's National Library will republish 556 ancient books as part of an ongoing effort to preserve traditional Chinese culture and promote academic research. The books, mostly from the Ming (1368-1644 AD) and Qing (1644-1911 AD) dynasties, will be published over a three-year period, the library said Tuesday. While modern printing techniques including microphotography, scanning and photocopying will be used in printing the books, their original appearance will be preserved by using traditional materials like rice paper, thread binding and blue cloth covers.

Ulan Bator : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday told his Mongolian counterpart Chimed Saikhanbileg that India is privileged to be considered as Mongolia's...

By IANS, London: Cage fighter Alex Reid made a lot of noise and was arrested for breaking into the house he shares with fiancee Chantelle Houghton.

London : Saudi Arabia's grand mufti Sheikh Abdullah al-Sheikh has said that playing chess is forbidden in Islam, a British newspaper reported on Thursday. Responding...

By IANS, Sonipat (Haryana): China needs democracy for Tibet to gain "genuine autonomy", Tibetan Prime Minister Lobsang Sangay said Thursday.

By Sudeshna Sarkar

IANS

Kathmandu : If concerted efforts are not made to recover two missing radiation detectors in the Himalayan ranges, another Chernobyl could erupt, poisoning two of Asia's biggest rivers, a Japanese filmmaker has warned.

By DPA, Johannesburg : South African police have arrested a man after discovering the carcasses of lions and rhinoceroses strewn around a house in the capital, Pretoria, a media report said Wednesday. Police were tipped off by the Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Animals after an inspector stumbled across the bones at the residence in the upmarket Waterkloof suburb, the South African Press Association reported. Many diplomatic residences and an air force base are located in Waterkloof. Photos taken at the scene showed carcasses and skulls strewn around the ground.

By DPA, Rio de Janeiro : Brazil's federal police arrested here an Englishman who intended to leave the country with 1,000 live spiders packed in two suitcases, the authorities said Thursday. Police said the arrest took place Wednesday at Rio de Janeiro's international airport, with the help of agents for the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama). Criminal charges were set to be pressed against the man, whose identity was not revealed, and he faced a fine of up to $2.3 million, the authorities stressed.

By IANS, Abuja : A military police helicopter with five people on board crashed in Nigeria Wednesday, Xinhua reported. The number of dead or injured was not known.

By DPA, London : Britain Tuesday announced an aid package totalling 455 million pounds ($910 million) to help tackle the crisis over rising global food prices. The Department for International Development (DFID) said 30 million pounds were in support of recent appeals by the World Food Programme (WFP) for countries most at risk from the crisis.

By IANS, Milan: Three people were killed in the northern Italian city of Milan when a pickaxe-wielding illegal immigrant from Ghana went on a rampage, officials said.

By IANS, Colombo : Sri Lankan jets bombed suspected Tamil Tiger targets, including an ammunition dump, as troops closed in on another key rebel stronghold in the north, the military said Monday. Air Force spokesman Wing Commander Janaka Nanayakkara said the jets undertook two bombing raids between 7.30 p.m. and 11.00 p.m. Sunday around one kilometre southeast of Palai in support of the ground troops. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) took the hits, the military said.

By DPA, Geneva : Russia and Georgia are to resume talks Nov 18 following the suspension in Geneva Wednesday of their first direct parleys since they went to war in August, European Union (EU) Special Representative for Georgia Pierre Morel told journalists. Russia and Georgia accused each other of walking out of the UN-brokered talks. "De facto the discussion was broken off by Georgia, which refused to participate in the plenary session," Interfax quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin, who headed the Russian delegation to the Geneva talks, as saying.

Tripoli/Tunis: A US drone strike in Libya has killed senior jihadi leader Abu Iyadh, who was believed to have masterminded a series of terrorist...

By IANS/RIA Novosti, Moscow : A 64-year-old Uzbek woman has been detained in Russia while trying to smuggle over 2,000 tortoises into the country, the interior ministry said.

By IANS,

By IANS, Washington : The sea of humanity that swept Washington DC Tuesday for the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th US president may have been the largest gathering in the American capital so far. Early estimates of the crowd that included many foreigners who had travelled specially for the occasion ranged from upward of a million to around two million. The largest gathering before Tuesday's inauguration was the one that turned up for Lyndon B. Johnson's swearing-in ceremony in 1965. It was 1.2 million strong.

By IANS, Kathmandu : Almost two months after Nepal's Maoist government became embroiled in a row with the army and was ousted from power, the republic's new Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal now finds himself dragged into yet another controversy involving both the army and the Maoist guerrilla forces. The Prime Minister's Office was forced to issue a clarification Sunday after the controversy snowballed and threatened to wedge a deeper rift between the ruling coalition and the Maoists, who are warning to go on the warpath.

By Dipankar De Sarkar, IANS, London : The British government has decided not to appeal against a court verdict last week allowing thousands of skilled migrants, most of them Indians, to live and work in Britain, the group that won the judgement said Thursday. Amit Kapadia, executive director for the pressure group Highly Skilled Migrants Programme (HSM) Forum, said a senior official of the British Home Office had written to him saying the government was "happy to take the judge's decision as final and do not intend to waste taxpayers' money with an appeal".

By IANS Santiago : The Chilean government has sent a team of geologists to investigate the sudden disappearance of a glacial lake in the south of the country. raising a renewed debate over global warming. Experts say glacial melting in the wake of rising global temperature had swelled the lake which then drained the excess water and eventually dried up, Spain's EFE news agency reported Friday. Cachet 2, a five kilometre long glacial lake in the eastern sector of the Northern Ice Field in Aysen area disappeared apparently due to the relatively high temperatures.

New Delhi: The first batch of 62 people have arrived from Bangladesh following India's exchange of enclaves with its South Asian neighbour earlier this...

Washington: Given India's tradition of renunciation of family life for public life, Narendra Modi's belated acknowledgment of his marriage may not damage Bharatiya Janata...

By IANS/RIA Novosti, Moscow : Police have released all participants of an unsanctioned gay pride rally detained in the Russian capital, the interior department said.

By RIA Novosti, Hong kong : Melamine, a toxic industrial additive that has left at least four babies dead in China, has been detected in Chinese products including non-dairy items in Taiwan, local media reported on Monday citing health sources. During voluntary testing of products containing Chinese-produced ingredients, melamine was discovered in dried cream, instant coffee, milk tea, instant coffee and cream soup. Taiwan has banned imports of all milk products from China amid a scandal over melamine-tainted milk powder, which has put nearly 13,000 children in hospital.

By RIA Novosti Tokyo : The G8 summit to be held in Japan's northern island of Hokkaido in July will be the most inclusive forum of its kind so far, gathering participants from 23 countries. The agenda and the list of participants were finalized late on Wednesday during the first meeting of an advisory committee in Tokyo. The upcoming forum of the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations will focus on climate change, and sustainable development in African states.

By TwoCircles.net news London: Ghost of Babri Masjid has come back to haunt Sadhvi Rithambara who has kept a low profile since the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992. British Indian Muslims have urged the British Government to stop Sadhvi Rithambara, whom they called “a terrorist Hindu leader,” from entering Britain. Rithambara is reported to be planning a tour of UK in September.

By Xinhua, Kathmandu : Nepali President Ram Baran Yadav and Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda have congratulated Barack Obama on becoming the US president, state-run newspaper The Rising Nepal reported Wednesday. In a message to Obama, President Yadav, on behalf of the government and the people of Nepal, extended warmest congratulations to Obama. "I also take this opportunity to express best wishes for the continued progress and prosperity of the people of the United States of America under your dynamic leadership," he said.

By IANS, Tokyo: Japan's jobless rate dropped 0.2 percent from the previous month to a seasonally adjusted 4.4 percent in May, government data showed Friday.

By DPA, Oslo : Climate change poses the main threat to the world's polar bear population, the world's five biggest polar bear nations have said. Norway, Denmark/Greenland, Russia, the US and Canada all agreed in 1973 to sign an agreement protecting polar bears and their habitat. But back then, hunting was regarded as the biggest threat to the bears. However, global warming, which causes the Arctic sea ice to melt, is now considered to be the main threat to polar bears that raise their young and hunt for food off the sea ice.

Seoul: The South Korean health ministry on Tuesday said there were eight more cases of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), bringing the total...

By Dipankar De Sarkar, IANS London : Wearing marigold garlands around his neck and a bright vermillion teeka on the forehead, Britain's prime minister was anointed Govardhan Brown Wednesday by a large crowd of cheering Asians celebrating Diwali in the heart of the British establishment. "From today, you are an honorary member of the Hindu community, as Govardhan Brown," said Ramesh Kallidai, general secretary of the Hindu Forum UK, to a beaming Gordon Brown inside a packed hall in the House of Commons, the British lower house of parliament.

By IANS, Moscow : At least three children were killed and another 15 injured after a school bus collided with another bus in Russia, officials said.

By Xinhua, Jakarta : A small plane crashed near the Taman Mini resort park in Jakarta Saturday, but the pilot reportedly survived the accident with minor injuries. "The (pilot) condition is not too bad. He has been sent to the hospital," Jakarta traffic police officer Kasno was quoted by leading news website Detikcom as saying. The accident did not cause major damage to the site as it crashed into an open field near the resort park. The plane is registered with the Indonesian Aero Sport Federation (FASI).

Washington, Oct 8 (Prensa Laina) The increase of firearms on the streets of the United States has put so much pressure on Miami security forces that they have been ordered to equip themselves "with as many automatic weapons as they can," Miami Police Chief John Timoney said Monday. Chief Timoney said his department should start an arms race that allows it to be on an equal footing with criminals, if it wants to stop murders, El Nuevo Herald daily reported.

By DPA, London/Moscow : The European Union (EU), due Monday to hold an emergency meeting on the Georgia crisis, should make a "root and branch" review of its relations with Russia, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in a newspaper article published Sunday. Russia's "hostile action towards Georgia" raised two urgent questions: How best to stabilise Georgia now, "and how to make it clear to Russia that its unilateral approach is dangerous and unacceptable," he wrote in The Observer.

Dhaka: Thirty-seven Bangladeshi migrants have returned home after being rescued by the Myanmar authorities at sea, a media report said on Friday. The migrants were...

By IANS, Washington: People are increasingly using household robots for chores, communication, entertainment and companionship but safety and privacy risks of the information-gathering objects that move around our homes are not yet adequately addressed, according to a new study. It's not a question of evil robots, but of robots that can be misused, said the University of Washington (UW) study. "A lot of attention has been paid to robots becoming more intelligent and turning evil," said co-author Tadayoshi Kohno, a UW assistant professor of computer science and engineering.

By IANS, Sydney : Glaciers in the southern Alps have lost 2.2 billion tonnes of permanent ice in a year since April 2007, the fourth highest annual loss since monitoring began. For the past 32 years, the New Zealand based National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research (NIWA) has been surveying 50 glaciers in the southern Alps, using a small fixed wing aircraft, to record the height of the snow line at the end of summer

By IANS Oslo : No "externally designed solution" will end Sri Lanka's dragging ethnic conflict, a senior Norwegian diplomat has said, as an international conference here called for a negotiated end to decades of fighting. Norway's special envoy to Sri Lanka, Jon Hanssen-Bauer, told the two-day meeting that ended late Friday that Oslo would be more than happy to back "any solution endorsed by the Sri Lankan people".

Barcelona/Dusseldorf/Paris: Relatives of the 150 people on board an Airbus A320 of a German budget airline that crashed in southern France while flying from...

By Xinhua Nairobi : Mediators who are trying to resolve the political impasse that has plunged Kenya into crisis called on the country's lawmakers Tuesday to expedite legislative reforms to diffuse the current tension. Former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, leading the panel of eminent African personalities in brokering peace, called on the legislators to exercise political goodwill to resolve the political impasse caused by the disputed December presidential elections.

By IANS, St. Petersburg : Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin played the piano and sang an English song at a charity event in St. Petersburg for children diagnosed with cancer.

By RIA Novosti, Kiev : Ten people were killed and ten injured in a blaze caused by an explosion at a slot machine arcade in east Ukraine early Thursday, an official said. The blast shook the Metro Jack Pot arcade in Dnepropetrosvk at 00.45 a.m. local time (09:45 p.m. Wednesday GMT), killing nine instantly while one person died later in hospital. Ten others have been hospitalised. Ukrainian TV said that people were unable to flee the building after the arcade became engulfed in thick smoke.

By Prensa Latina T'bilisi : Hundreds of demonstrators in Georgia demanded a second round of presidential elections on Tuesday, challenging the official results that named current President Mijail Saakashvili the winner. Despite the winter snow and cold, for the second time in the last few days the opposition was able to concentrate thousands of supporters in front of the Public Television station on central Rustaveli Avenue.

By IANS, Washington : US President Barack Obama was never in danger because of a prostitution scandal involving Secret Service agents during a trip to Colombia, a top official said Wednesday.

Kathmandu : Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi showed my son the "right way in his life", said an emotional Khagisara Saru Magar following a...

By IANS, London : A student of criminology who told a neighbour that he was "doing a PhD in murder and Jack the Ripper" was being quizzed for the brutal killing of three prostitutes in Britain. The man was arrested from his home a red light area where a woman’s head inside a rucksack was understood to have been found. Hours later, a woman’s body parts were discovered in River Aire in Shipley, West Yorks, Daily Express reported Thursday.

By Xinhua, Seoul : South Korean President Lee Myung-bak on Tuesday instructed his Cabinet to deal sternly with illegal and violent street rallies that pose a challenge to "national identity," according to Yonhap news agency. "The government has to carefully listen to some voices critical of government policy. But street demonstrations challenging the national identity or illegal violent rallies must be sternly dealt with," Lee was quoted by his spokesman as telling the weekly Cabinet meeting.

By DPA, Johannesburg : The uncertainty over whether US President Barack Obama will attend the football World Cup is creating problems for the South African Police, the country's police commissioner Bheki Cele said Friday. "One challenge is the American president who is coming, not coming, coming, not coming," Cele told a parliamentary committee during a briefing on the police's World Cup security plans in Cape Town, SAPA news agency reported.

By IANS, Manaus (Brazil) : Brazil has emerged as a major oil power with proven reserves estimated at 26 billion barrels and expectations that the figure will rise further, EFE news agency reported Friday quoting Energy Minister Edison Lobao. Lobao's announcement Thursday during a press conference in this Amazon city came as the state-controlled oil behemoth Petrobras confirmed existence of recoverable crude and natural gas up to five billion barrels at a new offshore field deep below the seabed and under a layer of salt.

By IANS, Panaji : Australian firms could soon partner Goa for using its waterways and jungles for tourism purposes, a top official of the Goa Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) said Friday.

By DPA, Washington/Los Angeles : Physicians at the UCLA Medical Centre in Los Angeles worked for more than an hour to resuscitate pop icon Michael Jackson, according to his brother Jermaine Jackson in broadcast remarks Thursday. The sudden death of the rock star on a hot Thursday afternoon triggered not only worldwide mourning but also an odd disconnect as he came back to life with his star power in nonstop broadcasts of file footage. Paramedics answered an emergency call at Jackson's rented mansion outside Los Angeles to find him unresponsive, officials said.

By DPA, Washington : The US government's deficit exceeded projections for the just-ended 2007-08 budget year, hitting a record $455 billion, federal officials announced late Tuesday. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Jim Nussle, director of the Office of Management and Budget, issued a joint statement summarizing the government's revenues and spending for the 12 months through September. The deficit represents 3.2 percent of gross domestic product in the $14-trillion US economy. The 2006-07 deficit was $161.5 billion, or about 1.2 percent of GDP.

By Arun Kumar, IANS, Washington : Most Asian ethnic groups including Indian Americans support Democrat Barack Obama over Republican John McCain by a substantial margin, but a still undecided one-third could impact the US presidential race in swing states, a new study shows. Obama is doing well among most Asian ethnic groups, the largest survey of Asian ethnic groups conducted by four universities and released Monday found. Japanese and Indian-Americans strongly favour Obama, and he has a lead among Chinese, Filipino and Korean voters.

By Xinhua Beijing : China will launch its first national census of pollution sources next month, mainly focussing on industries. The survey will cover 39 industries including metallurgy, chemistry, construction, power plants, papermaking, pharmaceuticals and mining, Zhu Jianping, chief of the survey office, said here Thursday. Unofficial estimates suggest that there could be more than 720,000 polluting industrial units across the country. It will also identify sources of agricultural and urban pollution and the number of remedial facilities in operation.

By DPA, Johannesburg/Harare : Zimbabwe's main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, has decided to withdraw from the presidential run-off elections June 27, party sources said Sunday. The decision was made Sunday morning at a meeting of the pro-democracy party's national executive in Harare, said the source, asking not to be named. He said the decision would be announced by Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC's leader and its candidate in the elections, later Sunday.

By KUNA Moscow : Russia's central elections committee announced here on Monday landslide victory of the front-runner presidential candidate, Dmitry Medvedev, in the nationwide presidential poll with 70.2 percent of the votes. Meanwhile, Communist Party leader, Gennady Zyuganov, came second with 17.8 percent of the ballot, while, Nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky gained 9.4 percent as the the leader of the Democratic Party. Another contender, Andrei Bogdanov, was left with only 1.3 percent.

By IRNA, Moscow : A Russian scholar said the European Union (EU) manipulated such issues as terrorism and human rights for its own political purposes. Talking to IRNA here on Saturday, Ludmila Kulagina, as a top researcher in the Russian Institute of Oriental Studies, criticized the recent EU move in removing the terrorist Mojahedeen Khalq Organization (MKO) form its terrorism list. She said the move was a clear example of the double-standard policy adopted by the west on the issue of terrorism and frankly undermined the EU claim of fighting terrorism.

By IANS, Washington : Seven Marines died and many were injured in an explosion during a drill at a Nevada army base in the US Monday night, Xinhua reported.

Washington : US President Barack Obama Thursday dedicated a Ground Zero museum commemorating the Sep 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the site of the...

By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS, Kathmandu: Ahead of the 51st anniversary of a failed uprising by Tibetans against the invasion and annexation of their country by China, Nepal police Sunday arrested the envoy of exiled Tibetan leader Dalai Lama in Kathmandu. Thinley Gyatso, the "ambassador" of the Dalai Lama, whose "government in exile" sits in Dharamshala in India, was taken into detention by Nepal police as a preventive measure to pre-empt the protests Nepal feels will be staged on its soil on March 10.

By IANS, Beijing : China is looking to develop a 33-tonne heavy-lift helicopter with Russian help.

By DPA Kampala : Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has ordered a census of all people maimed or disabled during the 20-year insurgency in the north of the country in a bid to provide them with assistance, his spokesman said Wednesday. Thousands of civilians have been killed, wounded or maimed mostly at the hands of fighters of the cult-like Lords Resistance Army (LRA) that has been waging a brutal rebellion against Museveni's government in the region.

By DPA, Washington : US President Barack Obama Saturday thanked Congress for passing the $787-billion economic stimulus bill, which he called "a major milestone on our road to recovery." In his weekly address he also warned that "this historic step won't be the end of what we do to turn our economy around, but the beginning." The long-awaited passage of the stimulus bill - the largest single spending proposal in US history - marked Obama's first major legislative victory since he took office Jan 20. The president could sign it into law as early as Monday, the White House said.

Moscow : Over a million people rallied in Grozny, the capital of the Russian republic Chechnya, Monday to protest against the caricature of Prophet...

By RIA Novosti, Moscow : Russia's energy giant Gazprom and Ukraine's energy company Naftogaz Monday signed a new contract on Russian gas supplies to Ukraine. Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Moscow and Kiev had reached agreement on all issues of gas transit and supplies. He added that there would be no intermediaries in the Russian-Ukrainian gas relations. Putin said Gazprom had been ordered to restart full natural gas transit to Europe via Ukraine.

By IANS/EFE,

By P.K. Balachandran, IANS Colombo : The Tamil Tiger rebels suffered yet another major blow Saturday, when the chief of their military intelligence, Shanmuganathan Ravishankar alias Col. Charles, and three of his lieutenants, were killed in a Sri Lankan army ambush in Mannar in northwest Sri Lanka, the defence ministry announced Sunday. Confirming the death of Charles, the pro-Tiger website Tamilnet said that a Deep Penetration Unit of the army had set off a claymore mine between Iluppaikadavai and Paalamadu on seeing the foursome travelling in a van.

By Venkata Vemuri, IANS, London : A shocked British government has ordered a full review of the country's child protection measures after a court convicted a young mother, her boyfriend and another man for the terrible death by torture of a 17-month-old child. In his short life, the boy known as Baby P endured 50 injuries - including broken bones and back - at his home in a London borough.

By IANS, Sydney : A turtle hatchling's first swim is the most critical of its life. Having run the gauntlet of air and land predators to make it to the sea, the tiny voyager must also evade hungry fish patrolling the beaches in its bid for freedom. For youngsters hatching on the Great Barrier Reef's coral cays, the risks are high. As many as 30 out of a 100 perish as they head for safe deep waters. But how much does this headlong dash through the waves cost the intrepid hatchlings?