Soldiers dug through tons of mud and dirt in search of victims of a massive landslide, as Mexican authorities looked for a police helicopter that went missing while carrying out relief operations on the flood-stricken Pacific coast.

Rescuers are digging through mud and debris to retrieve more bodies strewn across a farming valley in the southern Philippines by a powerful typhoon, as the death toll from the storm passed 500.

A powerful typhoon that swept away emergency shelters, a military camp and possibly entire families in the southern Philippines has killed around 350 people with nearly 400 missing.

Mexico’s old guard sailed back into power after a 12-year hiatus as the official preliminary vote count handed a victory to Enrique Pena Nieto, whose party was long accused of ruling the country through corruption and patronage.

ONE of Muammar Gaddafi’s sons tried to escape from Libya into Mexico under a false identity, it has emerged.

MEXICAN investigators have found a total of 116 bodies in pits near the US border, 28 more than previously reported, Attorney General Marisela Morales revealed.

At least four people were killed and more than a dozen injured when an explosion ripped through a passenger bus in the Philippines capital, Manila, officials said today.

The oil industry and the government need to do more to reduce the chances of another large-scale oil spill, a US presidential panel investigating the BP well blow-out said today.

The US is to lift its six-month ban on deep water oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico imposed after the BP oil spill.

A subsidiary of Shell Oil applied to drill one exploration well next year in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska’s north coast.

Oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico for much of the day yesterday before engineers reattached a cap being used to contain the gusher and direct some of the crude to a surface ship.

THE US Coastguard says BP has been forced to remove a cap that was containing some of the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.

The BP oil slick drifted closer to the coast of the Florida Panhandle today as a risky gambit to contain the leak by shearing off the well pipe ran into trouble a mile under the sea.

OIL giant BP faced mounting pressure yesterday to control a massive oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico after the US government threatened to take over the response to the month-old disaster.

THE US government will independently verify how much oil has leaked into the Gulf of Mexico from a BP-owned undersea well.

BP reported further progress yesterday in stemming the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, but new evidence showed part of the slick could be swept to Florida’s beaches and sensitive coral reefs.

US President Barack Obama yesterday warned of “massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster” as a giant oil slick from the Gulf of Mexico threatens environmental and economic catastrophe.

US President Barack Obama today directed that no new offshore oil drilling leases can be issued unless rigs have new safeguards to prevent a repeat of the explosion that unleashed the massive spill threatening the Gulf Coast with major environmental damage.

A MASSIVE oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that has become far worse than initially thought crept toward the coast yesterday as US government officials offered help from the military to prevent a disaster that could destroy fragile marshlands along the shore.

Mexico’s drug cartels have changed tactics and are turning more attacks on authorities, rather than focusing their fire on rivals gangs, the country’s top security official said.

A leading member of a powerful political clan was arrested today accused of leading the Philippines election massacre.

A United Nations team visited Pakistan’s battle-scarred Swat Valley today as hundreds of refugees made their way back to the troubled area.

Gunshots fired at a motorcade for Pakistan’s prime minister struck his vehicle today, but he was not in any of the cars during the apparent assassination attempt, a top government official said.

The US government has declared the polar bear a threatened species because of the loss of Arctic sea ice but also cautioned the decision should not be viewed as a path to address global warming.

A bomb blast at an Italian restaurant in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad tonight killed a Turkish woman and wounded 11 other people including a member of staff at the British High Commission and US Embassy staff.

Pakistani authorities were today continuing to question a 15-year-old boy who has confessed to be being part of the team that killed opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, marking what could be the first major breakthrough in the investigation.

Only a third of the world’s polar bears may be left within 50 years because of thinning sea ice from global warming in the Arctic, the US Geological Survey said.

THE Pakistani government yesterday authorised paramilitary troops to shoot anyone involved in serious violence in Karachi, where 37 people have been killed over the past two days, an official said.

The ivory-billed woodpecker, once prized for its plumage and sought by American Indians as magical, was thought to be extinct for years. Now it’s been sighted again, and conservationists are exulting.

Police fired a barrage of tear-gas canisters and bullets today in a major assault on Muslim suspects who took over a maximum-security jail in Manila, killing at least 17 of them, officials said.

US government scientists raised the alert level for Mt St Helens in Washington state after its second steam eruption in two days was followed by a powerful tremor.

Martin Scorsese offered his moviemaking talent today to a campaign to reopen the Statue of Liberty to the public.

Martin Scorsese offered his moviemaking talent today to a campaign to reopen the Statue of Liberty to the public.

THE United States will pause today in sombre remembrance of the September 11 terrorist strikes that led the country into an open-ended global war against a largely invisible enemy.

Rebellious soldiers demanding the resignation of the government of the Philippines have been given a deadline to surrender or face military action.