BEIJING: Twenty-four people were killed and 19 others injured in a fire aboard a steel company`s shuttle bus in eastern China at the weekend, a local official said Monday.The accident happened Sunday in the city of Wuxi, in Jiangsu province, a city government spokesman told AFP."The

NEW YORK: Officials at New York`s John F. Kennedy International Airport evacuated one of its airport terminals after a bomb scare Sunday on one of the busiest US holiday travel days, WABC television reported.The television station reported that authorities cleared JFK`s Terminal 1, while

LONDON: British police were Monday hunting a man suspected of shooting his ex-girlfriend, killing her new partner and then gunning down a police officer.   Raoul Thomas Moat, 37, allegedly shot his former partner and her new boyfriend early Saturday in Birtley, northeast England,

KABUL - US General David Petraeus formally took up his new role as commander of the Afghan war during a ceremony at NATO headquarters in Kabul on Sunday, saying: "We are in this to win."In a solemn ceremony held amid tight security, Petraeus received the colours of US and NATO forces

BAKU: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday that Washington was ready to help Azerbaijan and Armenia reach a peace deal on the breakaway Nagorny Karabakh region and that the issue was a "high priority". "We stand ready to help both Azerbaijan and Armenia to achieve and

KABUL: Afghan authorities said Sunday that they killed more than 60 rebels in raids against Taliban militants and their drug-trafficking backers in a restive part of southern Afghanistan. More than 16 tonnes of drugs -- mostly opium -- were also seized in Bahramcha district of Helmand

SANGE: A fuel truck exploded and set fire to a village in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, killing more than 230 people and injuring scores, officials and local residents said Saturday.Flames engulfed dozens of earth and straw constructed homes as villagers, many of them children,

TEHRAN - Iran hanged on Sunday two men convicted of "waging war against God" after they were found guilty of drug trafficking, armed robbery and abduction, a report said.The two Amanollah Pourian and Younes Rahmani were hanged in the southeastern city of Zahedan, Fars news agency reported

WARSAW - Poland`s polling stations opened at 6:00 am (0400 GMT) Sunday in a snap election forced by the air-crash death of conservative president Lech Kaczynski.Acting head of state Bronislaw Komorowski, the governing liberals` candidate, faces the late president`s identical twin,

BEIJING - A leading Tibetan environmentalist has been jailed for subversion, the third such verdict amid an apparent crackdown on intellectuals in the Himalayan region, activists said Sunday.Rinchen Samdrup, 44, was sentenced to five years in prison on Saturday for attempting to incite

BAGHDAD - US Vice President Joe Biden was Sunday marking Independence Day with American troops in Iraq ahead of talks later in the day with the two men vying to lead the conflict-wracked nation`s next government.Biden, on day two of his second trip to Baghdad this year, had on Saturday

TEHRAN - A top Iranian lawmaker said on Sunday that Tehran could stop refining uranium to 20 percent purity level, the most controversial part of its atomic programme, if it gets nuclear fuel required for a research reactor."If the fuel for the Tehran research reactor is given, Iran will

NEW DELHI - Frequent travellers to India are in for quite a shock the next time they fly in to New Delhi`s international airport with its new state-of-the-art terminal.For years, arrivals at Delhi`s main airport were greeted by the grim sight of dingy walls, dim lighting, congested

CEBU - Fifteen people were killed and more than 40 others were hurt when a speeding bus slammed into a concrete fence in the central Philippines, police said Sunday.The bus crash outside of central Cebu city Saturday was the second deadly road accident in the area in less than a

TEHRAN - Iran has submitted "evidence" to the Swiss embassy that its nuclear scientist was abducted by US intelligence agents, the English language Press TV website reported on Sunday."The evidence related to the abduction of Shahram Amiri by the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) has been

LONDON: The Lockerbie bomber could survive for 10 years or longer, according to the cancer specialist who said last year he would be dead within three months of his release, a newspaper reported on Sunday.Professor Karol Sikora, who assessed Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi for the Libyan

JERUSALEM: When US President Barack Obama meets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, media handlers will try to convey a crosser image of the relationship than at their last encounter.But major decisions are not expected to be taken at the meeting on Tuesday,

MISHOR ADUMIM: Israeli settler and industrialist Avi Elkayam, 35, has no patience with the Palestinian boycott of settlement products. "It`s economic terrorism," he shouts shaking his fist.The months-old campaign has had a limited financial impact so far but it has a catastrophic

SEOUL: "Hurray!" a group of students yells exuberantly after cresting a green mountain peak and taking out cameras to snap the scenery.It`s a common sight in South Korea, where hikers in their thousands take every opportunity to flee the congested cities and ramble the mountains.But this

NEW DELHI: Illegal but often tolerated, caning is rife in India`s school system, but the recent suicide of a 12-year-old pupil after a beating has brought the practice out of the shadows.Rouvanjit Rawla, a pupil at the prestigious La Martiniere for Boys school in the eastern city of