International

By IANS, Shanghai : The number of floating dead pigs found in a river in the Chinese metropolis has increased to 5,916, officials said Tuesday.

By Xinhua Shanghai : Scientists and astronomy enthusiasts all over the country all have access to data sent back from China's first lunar orbiter Chang'e-I, a leading scientist in the program said here Sunday.

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By IANS United Nations : Cuba has signed two pacts with the UN and said their implementation depended on the lifting of the 45-year-old US economic embargo against the communist-ruled island, Spain's EFE news agency reported Friday. Cuba's Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque signed two agreements on International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights here Thursday.

By IANS, London : A private school-educated mercenary arrived back in Britain Wednesday after being freed by the government of Equatorial Guinea for trying to mount an armed coup that he says was backed by the son of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher among others. Simon Mann said before leaving Equatorial Guinea that he would help British police prosecute a possible case against Sir Mark Thatcher and Ely Calil, a Lebanese-born businessman working in Britain, for the 2004 coup attempt.

By DPA, Washington : Tropical storm Fay has struck the Florida Keys and was expected to take a path across the southern US state after leaving more than 50 people dead on the Caribbean island nation of Haiti. Fay's centre reached the historical resort town of Key West Monday afternoon, bringing high storm tides, strong winds and heavy rain, forecasters said. The island is located at the southern tip of the continental US.

By IANS, Sydney : Survival after cancer is improving significantly in Australia, especially among the better-off groups in the population, according to a report. The report shows that between mid-1980s and early 2000s, the relative chances of surviving five years after a diagnosis of cancer increased significantly. The increase was generally greater for men than for women, with all-cancer five-year relative survival for men increasing from 41 percent in 1982-1986 to 58 percent for those diagnosed in 1998-2004.

By IANS, Washington : Some 6,500 US troops are being mobilised to conduct disaster relief and rescue missions in the country's east coast endangered by hurricane Irene, Xinhua reported.

By IRNA, Tehran : The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and Oxford University yesterday launched a new index to measure poverty levels which they said give a “multidimensional” picture of people living in hardship. According to a press release issued by the UN Information Center (UNIC) here on Thursday, they believe that the plan could help target development resources more effectively.

By Fakir Hassen, IANS, Johannesburg : The young lawyer Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, leading South African Indians on a march 100 years ago to burn registration certificates imposed by the government of the day, avoided the sectarianism that the Mahatma could later not avert during the partition of India in 1947. Internationally-respected academic and veteran African National Congress leader Kadar Asmal shared this view as he delivered an address in the last of a series of events to commemorate the 1908 Bonfire March that saw the birth of Gandhi's passive resistance philosophies.

By Mohit Dubey, Pokhara (Nepal) : It has been a week of agony and pain in Nepal. While tourist hotspot Pokhara escaped the brunt of the...

By DPA, Geneva : The United Nations top human rights official said Tuesday she was alarmed by the ongoing ethnic violence in China's north-west and called on community leaders to act with restraint. Government officials said the clashes have left at least 156 people dead and over 1,080 injured, in unrest which began late Sunday. "This is an extraordinarily high number of people to be killed and injured in less than a day of rioting," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said, calling the deaths a "major tragedy".

By IRNA, Berlin : German Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jens Ploetner on Wednesday expressed hope that the UN war crimes tribunal in the Hague could soon start the trial of top Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic. "We hope that such process could begin as soon as possible," Ploetner said in remarks to media representatives in Berlin. The 63-year-old Karadzic was transferred early Wednesday morning to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague from Belgrade where he was arrested on July 21.

By IANS, Los Angeles : Larry King's record-breaking run as prime-time talk-show host ends Thursday night as he hangs up his suspenders after 25 years on CNN.

By Xinhua, Dushanbe : Leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) member states Thursday pledged to strengthen the organisation's regional anti-terrorist structure and raise thier cooperation in the field of security to a new height. The leaders of SCO member states, who kicked off their summit in Tajik capital Dushanbe Thursday, expressed their satisfaction with the increased cooperation among themselves in their fight against terrorism, separatism and extremism.

By IANS/RIA Novosti, Moscow: For the first time in a hundred years, Britain extradited a Russian murder suspect upon request from the Russian authorities.

By Prensa Latina, Tokyo : Japan will soon have a state-of-the-art mechanism that will reinforce its early tsunami alert system, according to the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO). That will be possible thanks to an agreement signed on Monday in Austria by Japan and the CTBTO, which will allow Tokyo to access a network made up of 337 underground, underwater and atmospheric cells to detect possible nuclear tests.

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By RIA Novosti Buenos Aires : Cuban leader Fidel Castro polled 98.2% of the votes in National Assembly elections January 20, just 1% less than his brother and acting president Raul with 99.3%, official election results reported. Whether the 81 year-old Cuban leader will again be re-elected as president will become clear on February 24, when the National Assembly of 614 candidates is due to elect its next president.

New York : Large companies with prominent brand images and good corporate reputations are more vulnerable to be "named and shamed" by activists than...

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