Police in Bangladesh say unidentified assailants have stabbed two men to death, including a gay rights activist who also worked for the US Agency for International Development.

Two men, including a gay rights activist who worked for the US Agency for International Development, have been stabbed to death in Bangladesh.

Another 130 US troops have arrived in Iraq on what the Pentagon described as a temporary mission to assess the scope of the humanitarian crisis facing thousands of displaced civilians trapped on Sinjar Mountain.

The US government secretly financed a social network in Cuba to stir political unrest and undermine the country’s communist government, investigations reveal.

Public donations to Irish aid agency Goal slumped 43% last year as its income tumbled by €12m.

The United States has said Russia is ending the US Agency for International Development’s aid operations in the country, dealing a blow to President Barack Obama’s policy of “resetting” relations between Washington and Moscow.

Afghan police have shot and killed three protesters in two separate incidents as riots broke out during demonstrations over this week’s Koran burning incident.

Former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan has criticised world leaders for failing to take bold action on climate change, which he said threatens to worsen the food crisis that has left a billion people hungry.

Tens of thousands of Somalis are feared dead in the world's worst famine in a generation, the United Nations said.

Richard Holbrooke, a long-time US diplomat who was the architect of the 1995 Bosnia peace plan and served as President Barack Obama's special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, has died at the age of 69, an administration official said.

Hurricane Tomas pushed northward from Haiti, leaving villagers to mop up, evacuees to return to their tents and almost everyone relieved that the country did not suffer what could have been its first big disaster since the January earthquake.

Thousands of Haitians crowded into churches in the capital yesterday for a national day of mourning a month after the magnitude-7.0 earthquake killed more than 200,000 people.

Thousands of Haitians crowded into churches in the capital today for a national day of mourning a month after the magnitude-7.0 earthquake killed more than 200,000 people.

THE confirmed death toll from Haiti’s devastating earthquake has topped 150,000 in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area alone, the communications minister said yesterday, with many more thousands dead around the country or still buried under the rubble.

Hundreds gathered for the funeral of the archbishop of Haiti’s earthquake-stricken capital, in a rare formal ceremony that captured the collective mourning of a shattered nation where mass graves hold many of the dead.

Haiti’s government has declared the search for survivors of the country’s devastating earthquake over, the United Nations said today.

The rescues of two more people from beneath the rubble in Haiti’s stricken capital 10 days after the devastating earthquake have revived fading hopes that others may have survived, officials said today.

Haitians fled their quake-wrecked capital in the hundreds of thousands today amid government promises of refuge in safe, clean tent cities.

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton flew into the Haitian capital today to confer with President Rene Preval and receive an update on earthquake relief efforts.

President Barack Obama said his thoughts and prayers were with the people of Haiti, where a strong earthquake hit, and the United States stood ready to help the island nation.

POPE Benedict XVI decried the worsening plight of the world’s one billion hungry yesterday as a United Nations food summit rallied around a strategy of more help to farmers in poor nations but rebuffed a UN appeal to commit billions to the plan.

Cuba says it has documented proof that US diplomats on the island are delivering private funds to political dissidents to undermine the Communist government.

A US diplomat was shot and wounded while in a car in Khartoum, Sudan, today in an attack that also killed the official’s Sudanese driver, the US Embassy said.

Afghans feel that the security situation in their country has deteriorated compared with last year, a US-funded survey revealed today.

The ruling party took the lead in Azerbaijan’s parliamentary election according to the official vote count and exit polls, but rights groups and monitors reported irregularities and the opposition vowed to fight to overturn what it called fraudulent results.

US intelligence agencies did not anticipate they would know in advance about any successful coup against Saddam Hussein, according to documents analysing the situation in Iraq over the past 25 years.

ISRAEL could eventually relinquish more West Bank settlements, beyond the four to be dismantled in coming weeks, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suggested in an interview published yesterday.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held a congratulatory round of meetings with officials of the new unified Sudanese government today, but expressed outrage that Sudanese security forces manhandled aides and reporters accompanying her.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says there has been progress in Darfur but the world will not accept mere promises from Sudan’s new government to halt the violence.

The United States is focusing on providing clean water and basic sanitation in South Asian areas hit by an earthquake and tsunamis, to try to prevent illness and more deaths among survivors.

US aid to victims of the earthquake that sent deadly waves crashing onto shores in Asia and Africa has been doubled to $35m (€25.7m) and is likely to be much more in an international aid effort expected to run into the billions.

SUDAN’S Darfur region, already engulfed in a conflict that has forced 1.8 million people to flee their homes, faces a new threat - a drought that has all but wiped out this year’s harvest.

SUDANESE Arab militiamen rape women and young girls in a violent campaign intended to hurt, humiliate and drive black Africans from the troubled western region of Darfur, a human rights organisation said yesterday.

An American civilian who was beheaded in a grisly video posted on an al-Qaida-linked Web site had been warned to leave Iraq but refused, US officials said today.

The United States is handling the case of two Arab residents of Jerusalem who were kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents, Israeli officials said in Jerusalem.

JORDAN’S military court convicted eight Muslim militants yesterday and sentenced them to death for the 2002 killing of a US aid official in a terror conspiracy linked to al-Qaida.

Jordan’s military court convicted eight Muslim militants and sentenced them to death for the 2002 killing of a US aid official in a terror conspiracy linked to al-Qaida.

SHIVERING and sweating feverishly, Felicia Egbuchue took the malaria medicine her doctor prescribed.

A total US$9bn (€8bn) in US loan guarantees to Israel became available today with a formal announcement that didn't mention penalties for the Jewish state's construction of a controversial security barrier.

The US government has awarded an American company a contract that could be worth €620m to help rebuild Iraq’s power, water and sewage systems and repair airports and a seaport.

Witnesses saw a man with his face covered outside the home of a US diplomat at about the time he was shot dead, Jordanian officials said today as they probed a claim of responsibility for the assassination.

AN assassin pumped eight shots into an American diplomat outside his Amman home yesterday in the first known killing of a Western envoy in the Jordanian capital.

Unidentified gunmen killed an American diplomat today as he left for work in the Jordanian capital Amman, officials said.

Nearly half of all Palestinian children in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are suffering from chronic malnutrition due to Israeli curfews and blockades, according to a Palestinian survey.