Terror mastermind Osama bin Laden accused Tony Blair and Gordon Brown of a “flagrant disregard for the intellects of human beings” in his first video for almost three years.

Four suicide bombers struck communities of a small Kurdish sect in north-western Iraq, killing at least 200 people and wounding 300 more, Iraqi military and local officials said.

The United States is helping build a prison in Afghanistan that would take some prisoners now at Guantanamo Bay, but the White House said today it was not meant as an alternative to the detainee facility in Cuba.

Anti-Christian discrimination by the majority Muslim population of Iraq was raised by Pope Benedict XVI at a meeting with US President George Bush in the Vatican today.

Iran says it has uncovered spy rings organised by the United States and its Western allies, claiming on state-run television that the espionage networks were made up of “infiltrating elements from the Iraqi occupiers”.

US PRESIDENT George W Bush said last night that the mass shooting affects every student across the nation.

President Bush was described today as "shocked and saddened" by the mass shooting at Virginia Tech, the deadliest incident of campus violence ever seen in the US.

The man who was once US vice president Dick Cheney’s closest adviser is facing up to 25 years behind bars after being convicted of lying and obstructing a media leak investigation that shook the top levels of the Bush administration.

An Arab television station has broadcast previously unseen footage of a smiling Osama bin Laden meeting the top planners of the September 11 attacks in an Afghan mountain camp and calling on followers to pray for the hijackers as they carried out the suicide mission.

BRONWYNNE Bassier was desperate. Roaming the streets of her Biloxi, Mississippi, neighbourhood four days after Katrina, scavenging for food and clothes for her two-year-old son, Ms Bassier stumbled upon the one man who presumably could help: President George W Bush.

Iran’s foreign minister yesterday demanded the immediate withdrawal of British forces from Basra, saying their presence had destabilised Iraq’s second-largest city.

Confronting one of the nation’s worst natural disasters, US President George Bush said rebuilding from the massive devastation of Hurricane Katrina would take years and that “the days seem awfully dark” for millions of people suffering across the devastated Gulf Coast.

The Bush administration broadened its response to the earthquake and tsunami disaster in South Asia and Africa with plans for Secretary of State Colin Powell to visit the region and assess what more the United States needs to do.