International

By DPA, Karlsruhe (Germany) : Christian Klar, 56, a former leader of the Red Army Faction urban terrorist movement in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s, was released from jail Friday, his lawyer said. Klar, who was a co-leader of the "second generation" of the so-called Baader-Meinhof Gang, was granted parole by judges several weeks ago after he had spent 26 years in jail. His actual release from Bruchsal Prison in southwestern Germany was delayed until he had served out the minimum term by the turn of the year. Only one other member of the group is still in custody.

By AFP, Jiangyou, China : China on Sunday declared three days of mourning and suspended the Olympic torch relay nearly a week after a massive quake struck the country's southwest, as the death toll continued to mount. The announcements came after a powerful aftershock rattled devastated Sichuan province, killing at least three people and hampering China's efforts to help nearly five million homeless facing the threats of disease and floods.

By DPA, Washington : More than 100 journalists crammed into the White House's tiny press room - formerly an indoor pool - to hurl questions at US President Barack Obama's new press secretary Robert Gibbs for his first briefing. Gibbs strolled into the room 10 minutes late Thursday for his first moment in the media glare, flanked by an eight-member entourage from the new president's communications staff. "How are you all?" a smiling Gibbs asked as he surveyed the crowd of reporters gathered staring back at him. "I'm great."

By Xinhua Jakarta : Former Indonesian president Suharto, 86, has died in a hospital following organ failure, a senior police official told reporters Sunday at the hospital where he was being treated.

By RIA Novosti Moscow : Ukrainian and Russian energy companies will hold talks on Monday aimed at resolving their latest gas debt row that has prompted Gazprom to threaten a supply cutoff on February 12. The Russian gas monopoly said on Friday it would halt natural gas supplies to the ex-Soviet country if it fails to pay its outstanding bill, currently at $1.5 billion and rising. Ukraine's national oil and gas company Naftogaz denied it has any debts to Russia, and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko blamed an intermediary firm supplying gas for the debt.

By IANS,

By RIA Novosti United Nations : Russia has blocked a move for a UN Security Council vote condemning Moscow for an alleged violation of Georgian airspace, calling it premature. Georgia accused Russia last week of violating its airspace and dropping a missile at a radar station near the border with breakaway South Ossetia. Russia has denied the charges and called them provocations to disrupt peace efforts in the conflict zone, where its peacekeepers are deployed.

By IANS, Beijing : Business representatives of China and the US met here Wednesday to discuss energy efficiency.

By DPA, Singapore : In a desperate attempt to convince couples to have more babies, Singapore's government is offering a bonanza of tax benefits, leaves and other perks starting January. The 1.6-billion-Singapore-dollar ($1.1 billion) package outlined in the media Thursday will benefit all parents. Encouraging more births has been a national priority since Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong focussed on the escalating problem of low birth rates in 2004. The current fertility rate of 1.29 is far from the replacement level of 2.1.

By Vishal Gulati, IANS, Dharamsala : It is perhaps natural that the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader who is revered as a spiritual guru, should inspire writers from the Orient and the West. Despite there being over 100 biographies and other books on the monk, writers continue to queue for an audience with him. Officials of the Tibetan government-in-exile, which is based in this northern Indian hill station, say that more biographies have been written on their spiritual guru than on any other spiritual leader in the world.

By DPA, Bielefeld (Germany) : A Polish light plane crashed Monday in Germany, killing three occupants and leaving the fourth critically hurt, German police said. The dead were two men and a woman. The surviving occupant, who was resuscitated in an area hospital, was a woman. Police said they did not yet know why the plane crashed. It came down in woods just 150 metres from a housing estate. It was close to Windelsbleiche airfield near the north-western city of Bielefeld at the time of the crash.

London: British police have confiscated 250,000 pounds (about 401,713 dollars) of suspected funds for the Islamic State (IS), the anti-terror authorities said Monday. Most of...

By DPA,

By DPA, Chisinau (Moldova): Moldova's parliament Monday failed to elect a new president in a critical showdown vote, intensifying a political crisis in the former Soviet republic. A total of 53 MPs in Moldova's 101-seat legislature voted in favour of candidate Marian Lupu, put forward by the country's pro-Europe ruling coalition. But 48 MPs loyal to Moldova's Communist Party abstained from voting and left the parliament shortly before the poll. They left Lupu eight votes short of a 61-member majority necessary for a presidential candidate's election under Moldovan law.

By DPA, New York : Seven years after the Sep 11 terrorist strikes, New Yorkers Thursday will remember the attacks that killed more than 2,700 people with the destruction of the World Trade Center's twin towers. The city will observe the anniversary with renewed calls for vigilance against the constant threats of new terrorist attacks. Names of the dead will be read yet again. The presidential nominees of both US major parties, Republican senator John McCain and his rival, Democratic senator Barack Obama, plan to attend ceremonies at Ground Zero, site of the destroyed towers.

By Paras Ramoutar, IANS,

By NNN-PTI, Kathmandu : Indefinite curfew was clamped in an eastern Nepal town today, after some two dozen people were injured in police firing, following a violent clash between youth activists of country's two main political parties. The police opened fire to control the situation as the activists of CPN-Maoist affiliated Young Communist League and the Youth Force of CPN-UML clashed over the issue of fund raising in Dhankuta town, police said. Nearly two dozen activists from both of the groups injured during the incident, the police said.

By IANS, London : Mark Twain's autobiography is finally to be published later this year, and a section is on his scandalous relationship with a woman who became his secretary after his wife died. The writer, who created Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, had instructed that his autobiography should not to be published till 100 years after his death. Mark Twain died April 21, 1910. He left behind nearly 5,000 unedited pages of memoirs along with handwritten notes that said he didn't want them to be published for at least a century.

MOSCOW, February 13 (RIA Novosti) - Ecologists have expressed fears that remnants of the U.S. and Russian satellites that collided on Tuesday could pollute a large portion of Russia, a federal environmental official said on Friday. Konstantin Tsybko of the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources said that a number of large ecological organizations had approached him since a U.S. Iridium satellite and the defunct Russian Cosmos-2251 collided approximately 800 kilometers (500 miles) above Siberia. This was the first time such an incident has occurred.

By IANS, London : British Foreign Secretary David Miliband paid handsome tributes to his opposite number Pranab Mukherjee Monday three months after raising eyebrows in New Delhi with a statement about Kashmir. Miliband made opportunistic use of a London Book Fair event to praise Mukherjee's "breadth of vision" following the Indian external affairs minister's call for an immediate cessation of hostilities in Sri Lanka. During a much-publicised visit to India in January Miliband was reported to have addressed Mukherjee - the senior of the two - by his first name.

By DPA, San Francisco : Nine firefighters were killed when a helicopter carrying them to help control a wildfire in northern California crashed and burned in a remote forest area, the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) has said. Four other people aboard the Sikorsky S-61 helicopter suffered severe burns. The FAA said Wednesday the helicopter crashed under "unknown circumstances" as it was being used to ferry firefighters to tackle the blaze in the Trinity-Shasta National Forest.

By DPA, Paris/Sao Paulo : Air France has replaced two of three airspeed sensors on its entire fleet of Airbus A330 and A340 jets, according to a media report Wednesday. The carrier replaced two out of three Pitot tubes on each of the planes early Wednesday after a trade union urged pilots not to fly the planes until the changes had been carried out, the La Tribune newspaper reported.

By DPA, Colombo : Tamil rebels have made conflicting claims over the reported death of their leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, with one saying he was still alive and another confirming his death. A day after Selvarasa Pathmanathan, the head of the department of international relations of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), issued a statement confirming Prabhakaran's death in fighting in northern Sri Lanka last Monday, another powerful group within the rebel movement contradicted the claim.

By Joydeep Gupta, IANS, Copenhagen : As the stormy Dec 7-18 climate summit headed for a climax, it has readied deals on how to pay countries to stop deforestation and to set up regional centres for transfer of green technology to developing countries, a senior UN official said. The setting up of the regional centres was an idea mooted by India during an international meet in New Delhi this October. An Indian official said here Thursday night that the country could host one of the hubs, which are meant to spread green technologies quickly among developing countries.

By IANS, Toronto : The Toronto stock exchange (TSX) plunged more than nine percent Monday, registering the second biggest single-day loss in its history. The markets had suffered the biggest loss of 11 percent in October 1987. As the markets opened, the composite index fell by 864.41 points or 9.32 percent to end the first day of the week at 8,406.21. Monday's decline eclipsed the record of Nov 20 this year when the TSX composite dived 765.80 points to close the day at 7,724.80. On that day, the index was pushed below the 8,000-mark for the first time in five years.

BRUSSELS, Dec 13 (KUNA) -- European Union (EU) leaders are meeting in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, Thursday to sign a landmark treaty to ease the smooth functioning of the enlarged 27-member European bloc. The Lisbon treaty creates the post of a foreign policy chief to play a more effective global role and assigns a long-term EU president. Currently the EU Presidency is rotated among member states every six months. The treaty gives greater powers to the European Parliament and reduces the size of the European commission, the EU's executive body.

By DPA, Washington : The seven astronauts on space shuttle Endeavour were to complete their mission to the International Space Station (ISS) with landing scheduled at NASA's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida Sunday. The shuttle undocked from the ISS at 9.47 a.m. (1447 GMT) Friday, and was expected to land at the Kennedy Space Centre at 1.19 p.m. (1819 GMT Sunday. On Saturday, US space agency NASA was closely monitoring a cold front, which might bring rain, thunderstorms and cross-winds, and could affect Sunday's entry and landing at the Kennedy Space Centre.

By IANS, Washington : Along with Barack Obama's mother-in-law Marian Robinson, a group of about 50 people from Chicago, forming the president's extended family, have visited him at the White House and more friends and in-laws plan such trips. About 50 of Obama's friends and in-laws arrived at the White House just after midnight Jan 20, the Inauguration Day, for what they called a "housewarming party", the Washington Post reported Sunday.

By IRNA Berlin : The commissioner for European Union foreign policy, Benita Ferrero-Waldner on Saturday pointed to a possible boycott of this summer's Olympic Games in China. Speaking with the Sunday daily Bild am Sonntag, Ferrero-Waldner stressed that the Olympic Games should take place in an environment, "reflecting the Olympic spirit." "This includes respecting human rights as well as unrestricted freedom of opinion and press. We should monitor closely how Beijing behaves over the next weeks and then decide about boycott measures," the EU official said.

By IANS, Tehran : Iran is working on a plan to launch two communication satellites with Russia by the end of this year. During the Moscow visit of Iran's Minister of Telecommunication Reza Taqipour in April, a memorandum of understanding was signed between Taqipour and his Russian counterpart Igor Shchegolev for broader cooperation in the field of telecommunication. Mohammad Hosseinpour, a senior advisor to Taqipour, told Mehr News Agency Monday that if everything went according to the plan, the two telecommunication satellites would be launched by year-end, Press TV reported.

By IRNA, Vienna : Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani said on Monday that countries of the world pay for the US wrong economic policies. Larijani made the remarks in his keynote address to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) meeting in Geneva on Monday. There is no doubt that some part of the problems refer to economic infrastructure of other countries who claim a global management but are not able even to be accountable for their wrong mismanagement and are not ready to compensate for their mistakes, he said.

By IANS, Colombo : A total of 234 Tamil prisoners in Sri Lanka, most of them former Tamil Tiger rebels, are on a hunger strike the past five days here, said officials Monday.

By IANS, Singapore : In a novel approach to controlling illegal roadside parking in Singapore, authorities here are going to set up CCTV cameras along roads on a trial basis.

By Fakir Hassen, IANS Durban : A South African whose husband is of Indian origin Wednesday won a case at the Equality Court here against a landlord who reserved his block of apartments for use by members of the white community only. The owner of the Dunmarsh Apartments in the seaside town of Amanzimtoti and lessee Bronwyn Ellen Gerber reached a settlement that was made an order of the court in terms of which the owner, S.T. Evenwel, will pay Gerber 10,000 rands (about $1,500).

By IRNA, London : Britain will be forced to reduce the strength of its armed forces by 15 per cent due to the economic recession, a leading military think-tank warned Wednesday. Cuts to the budget combined with growing costs would also mean that the country’s military capabilities in terms of ships, aircraft and tanks would also be reduced by a similar amount in the next six year, according to a report by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

Washington, January 04, SPA -- U.S.President George W. Bush on Thursday urged Kenyans to refrain from further violence and called on Kenya’s president and opposition leader to work together to resolve an election dispute that has sparked deadly violence. “It’s very important for the people of Kenya to not resort to violence,” Bush told Reuters in an interview at the White House.

By IANS, Chennai : Tamil Nadu Congress president K.V. Thangkabalu Sunday said that the Tamil minority's problems in the neighbouring island can only be resolved by applying the terms of an accord signed between India and Sri Lanka in 1987. "The only solution to the long-pending Lankan Tamil people's issues can be through the application of the accord signed between (former Indian) prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and (former Sri Lankan) president J.R. Jayewardene in 1987. And this will be possible (only) after the warring sides cease fighting," Thangkabalu said.

By DPA, Singapore : A Singapore court sentenced a serial predator and rapist to 42 years in jail Tuesday, the longest prison sentence handed down to a sexual offender in the city state so far, a news report said. Bala Kuppusamy was also ordered to be caned the maximum fine of 24 strokes. Between April and June, the 48-year-old man robbed and sexually assaulted seven women who were walking alone at night, the online edition of Straits Times newspaper reported.

By DPA, Barcelona : Spanish police Thursday arrested more than 20 people as rioters disrupted more than 100,000 football fans celebrating FC Barcelona's Champions League victory in Barcelona's city centre. A group of violent fans threw beer cans and bottles at police and journalists on Barcelona's Las Ramblas boulevard, police said. The attacks were mainly aimed against a team of Spanish state television TVE that covered the victory party.

By DPA, Manila : US freight and logistics firm United Parcel Service (UPS) said Wednesday it is relocating its Asian hub from the Philippines to China in the next three years. Andy Connelly, UPS senior vice president for South Asia Pacific, said the new intra-Asia hub in Shenzhen, China will be operational by 2010. The new facility, with a total land area of 89,000 sq mts, will launch 100 flights per week and employ 400 people. It has the capacity to process 18,000 packages an hour, Connelly said.

By RIA Novosti Kiev : Russia will resume a joint project with Ukraine to build An-70 military transport aircraft after an almost 2-year delay in setting up the program, the Ukrainian defense minister said on Friday. Russia withdrew from the program in May 2006 to build the giant plane, which was launched in 1984, on the grounds that it was outdated. "Russia has confirmed that it will continue this work, and we will jointly construct the An-70. This was personally disclosed to me by my Russian counterpart Anatoly Serdyukov," Yuriy Yekhanurov said.

By IRNA, London : The British government was accused Thursday of drawing up a secret hit list of embassies to be closed as a result of the sharp fall in the value of the pound. Conservative shadow foreign minister David Lidington claimed an internal Foreign Office memorandum ordered officials to work out plans for substantial cuts "which could be implemented soon after the election," due in May. The memo stated that further cuts "should not be achieved by salami-slicing but instead by stopping activity, closing posts and reducing staff numbers", according to Lidington.

By Xinhua, Chengdu (China) : A man who used a sport's starting pistol to take hostage a woman at China's Chengdu airport has been detained, the police said Friday. The incident took place near the security counter, when the man fired two shots into the air with the starting pistol and grabbed the woman and rushed to the security channel. Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport police and security guards quickly overpowered the man and freed the woman, who wasn't injured.

By IANS, London : Police arrested 17 people and closed six London Underground stations after thousands of revellers organised a non-stop drinks party late Saturday night to protest a ban on tippling in the city's most popular mass transit system. Four train drivers and three Underground staff were assaulted, one police vehicle was damaged and two officers assaulted and another was injured in the chaotic revelry that paralysed the underground transport system, a Guardian online report said Sunday.

By P.Vijian, NNN-Bernama New Delhi : The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) will soon find itself short-changed by banks when Malaysia and Sri Lanka jointly combat cross-border money-laundering and terrorist financing. This follows the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka and its counterpart in Bank Negara last Saturday. CBSL was represented by its deputy governor Dr Ranee Jayamaha while Zamani Abdul Ghani appeared for Bank Negara.

By IANS/RIA Novosti,

By IANS, Kiev : Ukraine's acting government Monday issued an arrest warrant for ousted president Viktor Yanukovych on charges of mass crimes against protestors in...

By Dipankar De Sarkar, IANS London : British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has promised to "step up" sanctions on Myanmar by blocking trade in items such as timber if the regime there does not show signs of change. "The Burmese regime is a repressive, illegal and undemocratic regime. Unless they change we will step up sanctions...our strategy is not only to push the regime to change but to offer to a new government support for economic development," Brown told the British parliament Wednesday.

Mumbai : BJP legislator from South Mumbai M.P. Lodha on Tuesday urged the central goverment to convert Jinnah House, the house built by Pakistan...

By IANS, Washington : E. coli bacterium, one of the best-studied single-celled organisms around, is a master of industrial efficiency. This bacterium can be thought of as a factory with just one product - itself. It exists to make copies of itself and its business plan is to make them at the lowest possible cost, with the greatest possible efficiency. Efficiency, in the case of a bacterium, can be defined by the energy and resources it uses to maintain its plant and produce new cells versus the time it expends on the task.

Kiev : Ukraine's chocolate king Petro Poroshenko has won the presidential election in the first round with 54.7 percent of the vote, the country's...

Washington: Americans see the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group as a bigger threat to the US than Iran, Russia or other countries, according to...

By RIA Novosti Kiev : Ukraine and Russia have put off talks on their long-running natural gas dispute by one day until Wednesday, Ukraine's oil and gas company Naftogaz said on Tuesday. The former Soviet allies partially resolved their dispute last Thursday, agreeing that Ukraine would pay off about a $1 billion of its debt and that talks would continue on a supply scheme for 2008, after Russian gas monopoly Gazprom restored supplies, which were cut by 50% early last week.

By IANS,

By Xinhua Kiev : A coal mine blast killed at least 17 miners Sunday in eastern Ukraine while 14 were still missing, the Interfax news agency reported. The explosion took place around 3 a.m. local time in the Zasiagyko coalmine in the eastern region of Donetsk, the Emergency Situations Ministry said. There were 457 miners working underground when the blast occurred. As many as 31 miners were in the area of the blast while others managed to climb to safety. The toll could rise as rescuers were working at the site to retrieve survivors, Interfax-Ukraine said.

New York: Four India-born Americans were recognised for their contributions to the US along with 36 other people in the annual Great Immigrants tribute...

By RIA Novosti, Washington : US space agency NASA said Tuesday its Phoenix Mars Lander had ceased communications after operating for more than five months on the red planet, and announced the termination of the successful space exploration project. Launched Aug 4, 2007, Phoenix landed on the Martian surface May 25, 2008. The $420-million mission lasted much longer than the planned three months, and verified the presence of water-ice in the Martian subsurface, among other important scientific findings.

By EuAsiaNews, Brussels : A British Member of the European Parliament (EP), Liz Lynne, invited a delegation of Sikhs to EP Monday as part of the launch of a new interest group. But she said the EP authorities had ruled the Kirpan dagger worn by some of them to be a security threat and denied the Sikhs entry, 'The Parliament.com ', published in the UK by Dods, reported on its website Tuesday.

By RIA Novosti, Washington : A top US Coast Guard official has told the Congress that Russia is getting ahead of the United States in the "Arctic race" and the administration must urgently revise its approach to polar exploration. "I'm concerned we are watching our nation's ice-breaking capabilities decline," Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Wednesday. "It's imperative to obtain the current validating capabilities so our polar operations can be met," he said.

By Sudeshna Sarkar,IANS, Kathmandu : The smear campaign by a section of Nepal's disgruntled media against Indian joint ventures intensified Sunday with fierce new propaganda that also targeted the Indian embassy in Kathmandu. Nepal's private media house, the Kantipur Group, began spearheading a campaign asking the Indian embassy to apologise after the group distorted the embassy's concerns regarding Indian investment companies in Nepal as a pressure tactic to force substandard food products on Nepal.

By Arun Kumar, IANS, Washington : US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is confident that American companies will compete for their share of the nuclear business once the India-US civil nuclear deal is operationalised. "We have a letter of intent from the Indians that we believe is a very firm set of commitments and a framework for making sure that our businesses can do business in India," Rice told reporters Friday on way to New Delhi following Congressional approval of the deal.

By IANS,

By IANS, Paris : Despite a difficult situation in Bangui, France has ruled out any eventual stalemate in the Central African Republic (CAR) where its...

By Prensa Latina Taipei : Taiwanese voters will elect the 113 members of their Legislative Assembly on Saturday to decide the future of the island, which current President Chen Shui-bian wants to push toward independence. Chen and his Progressive Democratic Party and the Kuomintang Nationalist Party are the main contenders in this campaign, in which every kind of accusation and insult are used.

By DPA Buenos Aires/Caracas : A Venezuelan airliner with 46 people on board crashed late Thursday in northern Venezuela, Union Radio reported citing civil defence regional chief Gerardo Rojas. Rescue crews were racing to the poorly accessible crash site in the Andes Mountains at an altitude of 4,750 metres in Paramo Piedra, where the wreckage was spotted from the air after a search for the missing Santa Barbara Airlines ATR-42, Venezuelan officials said. There was no immediate word about the fate of the passengers and crew.

By RIA Novosti Washington : The US Senate has approved a defence bill of $648.8 billion, which includes $225 million -- 27 percent less than requested -- for the deployment of missile defence systems in Central Europe. President George W. Bush had originally requested $310.4 million for the deployment of an anti-missile shield in the Czech Republic and Poland, but the sum was cut by $85 million until negotiations have been completed with the host countries.

By NNN-MAP New York (United Nations) : The United Nations Security Council held, on Friday, consultations about the Sahara issue, opposing Morocco to the Algerian-backed separatist movement Polisario. Held in the presence of UN personal envoy, Peter Van Walsum, these consultations were marked by widespread support for the negotiations process in a respect to the "letter and substance" of the 1754 resolution, except for an isolated, hostile, and counter-productive attitude of South Africa's representative.

By RIA Novosti, Vladikavkaz : The disputed Georgian region of South Ossetia joined North Ossetia on Saturday in a day of mourning for the victims of Thursday's terrorist attack in the capital of the Russian North Caucasus republic. Twelve people, including a female suicide bomber, were killed and around 40 wounded in Thursday's blast at a bus stop in Vladikavkaz. The bomb was set off as passengers got out of a public minibus. "On the day of mourning in North Ossetia, the funerals of 10 victims of the explosion will be held," a government official said.

By Xinhua Yangon : UN Special Envoy Ibrahim Gambari left here Thursday afternoon winding up his six-day Myanmar mission, the second for him, said the UN Information Center here. During the visit, Gambari, who is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's Special Adviser on Myanmar, met Prime Minister General Thein Sein and Aung San Suu Kyi, detained leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD), and government officials.

New York, July 13 (IANS) Mobile phone notifications can ruin your focus even if you do not actually pick up the phone to respond...

By IANS,

Beirut: At least 19 people were killed in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo in regime bombing and rebel rocket attacks, the Syrian Observatory...

Tehran : Nuclear talks between Iran and the world powers to tackle the obstacles in the way of reaching a final deal are at...

By IANS/RIA Novosti, Moscow: A woman doctor at a maternity clinic in Russia was detained by police when he tried to sell a newborn baby for one million rubles (around $32,000), police said.

By IANS/EFE, Madrid : Spain's National Court has handed down sentences of more than 1,000 years each to three members of a terrorist group found responsible for a 2006 bombing that left two people dead. The tribunal also ordered the three ETA terrorists - Igor Portu, Mattin Sarasola and Mikel San Sebastian - to pay 500,000 euros ($620,000) in compensation to the family of Carlos Alonso Palate and 700,000 euros ($870,000) to that of Diego Armando Estacio.

Washington: A homeless man has been arrested and charged with arson for a fire that destroyed an Islamic community centre in the US city...

By Xinhua Bangkok : Thailand's ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra said Thursday he would request the country's Supreme Court to grant him permission to visit Britain after the first hearing of his case March 12. The online portal of the Bangkok Post quoted Thaksin as saying that he has to go back to Britain to take care of his Manchester City business. He said he would travel to Britain March 13, a day after he is scheduled to appear at the court to attend the first hearing.

Jammu: One person was killed and another injured on Tuesday due to heavy shelling by Pakistan Rangers in Jammu and Kashmir, police said. They also...

By RIA Novosti, Kiev : The head of the Ukrainian presidential administration has said that Ukraine is unlikely to join NATO's Membership Action Plan (MAP) this year. "I believe this issue is off the agenda, and we all understand we will not join MAP," Viktor Baloha said in an interview with Ukraine's ICTV channel broadcast on Sunday. NATO refused at its summit in April to let Georgia and Ukraine into MAP, a key step for membership to the 26-nation alliance, but pledged to review the decision in December. The countries had received strong U.S. backing for their bids.

By RIA Novosti Donetsk (Ukraine) : The toll in methane explosion in a mine in eastern Ukraine has risen to 80. "Eighty people died, and the fate of another 20 is not known. Sixty-six bodies have been retrieved, and 42 of them identified," Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Andriy Klyuyev said Monday. The explosion early Sunday in the Zasyadko coalmine in the Donetsk Region caused a fire that raged through the mine. A total of 457 miners were underground at that time, and 357 have since been brought to safety.

By Xinhua, Beijing : China's benchmark stock index finished 3.67 percent lower Monday, declining for a third straight day after an expected lending rate cut failed to materialize over the weekend. The key Shanghai Composite Index opened 0.42 percent lower before briefly entering positive territory minutes into the morning trade. But weak buying interest and profit-taking drove it to close 72.33 points lower at 1,897.06. The smaller Shenzhen Component Index dropped 245.15 points, or 3.65 percent, to 6,466.19.

By RIA Novosti Moscow : Two pilots safely ejected as a South Korean military plane crashed on Monday during a routine patrol flight near the border with North Korea, the Xinhua news agency reported. The agency said citing the South Korean military that an RF-4C fighter crashed early Monday in mountainous Gangwon Province, 25 minutes after taking off from an airbase south of Seoul. The military said there were no reports of casualties on the ground and a team of investigators had been dispatched to the scene to determine the cause of the accident.

By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS, Kathmandu : A Hindu kingdom till two years ago and ruled by an iron-fisted king who believed he was an incarnation of god, Nepal will celebrate Wednesday the second year of overthrowing the shackles of a feudal regime with sweeping changes that includes a new government to be headed by its former hunted-down guerrillas.

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said that India had not fulfilled some commitments to Africa as quickly as it should have...

By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS, Kathmandu : As Nepal began celebrating its Hindu festival of Diwali with five days' festivities, the Himalayan republic's power-strapped government is appealing to the nation to go slow on lights, one of the main accessories of the festival. Currently reeling under a three to five hours' power outage daily and the closure of nearly 200 small to medium-scale industries due to the power crisis, the state-run Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) has issued an appeal to consumers not to light electric lamps as these would further pressure the reeling power supply.

By RIA Novosti, WASHINGTON : The queen of soul, Aretha Franklin, will be among a star studded line up performing at U.S. president-elect Barack Obama's inauguration on January 20 in Washington. The press service of the joint congressional committee on inaugural ceremonies announced the line up on Wednesday, which includes violinist Itzhak Perlman, cellist Yo-Yo-Ma, pianist Gabriela Montero and poet Elizabeth Alexander, which will take place in the U.S. capital.