Kenyans began casting votes today in a nationwide election seen as the country’s most important – and complicated – in its 50-year history, five years after more than 1,000 people were killed in poll-related violence.

A five-storey home that stood in the middle of a new main road in China has been demolished by authorities.

Forty-five grimy, exhausted Chinese coal miners trapped by a cave-in were rescued today, ending a 36-hour ordeal in the world's most dangerous country for the industry. Eight other miners were killed in the accident.

A PREGNANT woman in south China was beaten and forced to have an abortion just a month before her due date because the baby would have violated the one-child limit, her husband said yesterday.

A pregnant woman in south China was beaten and forced to have an abortion just a month before her due date because the baby would have violated the one-child limit, her husband said today.

A mentally ill man went on a stabbing rampage as students left an elementary school, killing a second grader and an elderly passer-by and wounding five others, a Chinese government website said today.

RESCUERS in Taiwan have found nearly 1,000 people alive in the area around three remote villages devastated by Typhoon Morakot, which pummelled the island over the weekend, the country’s military said.

Parents whose children were crushed to death in schools that collapsed in China’s mighty earthquake say they are no longer being allowed to march, wave banners and vent their rage in public.

AS PRESIDENTS’ grandmothers go, she would certainly have some unique and sound words of advice for White House staff.

A Kenyan policeman was lynched by a mob of demonstrators today in revenge for the shooting of an MP by another officer.

Fresh riots broke out on the streets of Kenya's capital Nairobi today after an opposition politician was murdered by gunmen at his home.

Fierce fighting over land killed 22 people and left 200 homes burned in Kenya's troubled western Rift Valley, officials said today, yet another eruption of ethnic clashes following the disputed re-election of President Mwai Kibaki.

Another suspected case of SARS emerged in southern China today as international medical investigators scoured an apartment block to determine if it played any role in the infection of a man who lived there – the season’s only confirmed case of the virus so far.

A WAITRESS hospitalised in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou was declared the country's second suspected SARS case of the season yesterday, just as the first patient was pronounced recovered and released.

A waitress in hospital in China’s southern city of Guangzhou was today declared the country’s second suspected SARS case of the season.

Vice President Hu Jintao was appointed as leader of China’s Communist Party today, handing him the country’s most powerful position and making him a certain bet to replace Jiang Zemin as president next year.