Firing tear gas and rubber bullets, Egyptian riot police clashed for a second day with thousands of rock-throwing protesters demanding that the ruling military quickly announce a date to hand over power to an elected government.

Thirteen people killed when a suicide bomber rammed a military convoy in Afghanistan included five coalition troops and eight civilian contractors, Nato has said.

A Taliban suicide bomber rammed a van into an armoured Nato bus today in Kabul, killing 13 American troops and four Afghans, US and Afghan officials said, in the deadliest attack on coalition forces in more than two months.

Pressure was growing today on Italy’s embattled premier Silvio Berlusconi as he struggled to win support for a vital emergency growth plan.

Tens of thousands of people converged on the heart of Cairo today, responding to a call for a million Egyptians to unite in the largest protest in a week of unceasing demands for President Hosni Mubarak to leave after nearly 30 years in power.

A NATIVE Irish apple tree will be planted tomorrow on the banks of the Scariff river by Belfast author and former hostage Brian Keenan.

ONE week into the US general election race, the polls show a dead heat. But many US presidential scholars doubt that John McCain stands much of a chance, if any.

People in war zones want to read Harry Potter, too.

Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and Christians make sense of great loss differently, writes Kenneth Woodward.

In a disillusioned Middle East where calls for a change - any change - in the US leadership resonated throughout the run-up to the election, Kuwait is clearly Bush country.

THE origin of what historian Arthur Schlesinger called the Imperial Presidency now expanding the American empire under George W Bush can be traced back to the 1960s and Vietnam, but might never have emerged if JFK had survived Dallas.

BARELY a week after the firstIsrael-Palestinian summit of his tenure, US President George W Bush is under pressure to show his mettle in containing the fallout from fresh Middle East violence and implementing the US-backed ‘roadmap’ to peace.

There was shock and disbelief at the fall of Baghdad among Arabs today – and also anger at marines wrapping an American flag around a statue of Saddam Hussein.

US PRESIDENT George W Bush has staked his political future — and his place in history — on the outcome of war with Iraq.

Threats from Osama bin Laden have made Americans and Britons in the Gulf region wary but not yet fearful enough to leave.

China today expelled a US-based Chinese sociologist convicted of spying for Taiwan, a US official said.

A US-based Chinese sociologist has been convicted in Beijing of spying and sentenced to 10 years.

New evidence may lead to the prosecution of seven men implicated in Cambodia's 'killing fields' genocide.

A Chinese court has convicted an American business professor of spying, and ordered that he be expelled.

A US-based political scientist whose detention in China has caused a diplomatic uproar in Washington has been formally arrested on spying charges.