An international maritime search was underway tonight for a missing cargo ship amid fears it was under the control of pirates as it passed through the English Channel.

Authorities trying to control a huge oil slick threatening Irish and Welsh coastlines were today hopeful mild weather conditions will avert an ecological disaster.

The biggest oil slick to threaten Ireland for more than 10 years was tonight being tracked as it moved closer towards coastlines.

THE fire safety system on a Russian nuclear-powered submarine malfunctioned on a test run in the Sea of Japan, spewing chemicals that killed at least 20 people and injured 21 others.

The Russian Navy successfully test-fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile today, officials said.

Georgian troops today pulled out of the capital of the breakaway province of South Ossetia under massive Russian shelling.

A fire broke out aboard a Russian nuclear submarine, killing two crew members, but causing no radiation threat, the Interfax news agency reported today.

Rescue crews managed to loop cables under the structure trapping a mini-submarine deep in the Pacific Ocean today and will try to lift the vessel closer to the surface, Russian navy spokesman Captain Igor Dygalo said.

The derelict nuclear submarine that sank in the fish-rich Barents Sea while en route to a scrapyard cannot be raised until at least next year, a Russian naval chief said today.

A senior Russian admiral says 23 sailors in the Kursk may have suffered through three days of agony waiting in vain for a rescue that never came.

The sinking of the Kursk was not caused by a collision with a foreign submarine, the leading investigator into the disaster says.

Investigators examining the wreckage of the Kursk nuclear submarine have removed the bodies of 45 sailors since the vessel was brought to dock in northern Russia earlier this month.

Investigators today revealed the ‘‘hell’’ inside the nuclear submarine Kursk which sank in the Barents Sea with the loss of 118 lives.

A giant barge hauling the battered Kursk submarine pulled into waters of a Russian shipyard today, in the final stage of an ambitious salvage effort made riskier by the ship’s two nuclear reactors and missile arsenal.

A Dutch consortium on today began raising the Kursk nuclear submarine from the bottom of the Barents Sea, where it lay for more than a year following the explosion and sinking that killed 118 Russian seamen.

Divers working on the wreck of the Kursk have begun piercing the last of 26 holes in the vessel's hull.

Naval engineers using a remote-controlled mini-sub conducted exploratory work today at the site where the Kursk nuclear submarine sank, laying the groundwork for the complex, two-month operation to raise the shattered ship.

The Russian Navy has today denied a report that one of its nuclear submarines had suffered an accident during recent exercises in the Barents Sea and couldn’t reach port under its own power.

The Russian navy has dismissed claims the Kursk was sunk by a missile from another Russian vessel.