Around 300 more people have been evacuated from besieged rebel-held neighbourhoods of Syria’s third-largest city, Homs, a Syrian Red Crescent official said.

The United Nations is investigating reports that aid has yet to reach remote parts of the Philippines, a month after a devastating typhoon.

The death toll from one of the strongest typhoons on record has risen above 5,000 in the Philippines and is likely to climb further.

Workers in the typhoon-shattered city of Tacloban buried scores of unidentified bodies in a hillside mass burial as desperately needed aid began to reach some of the half-million people displaced by the disaster.

Eight people were crushed to death when thousands of typhoon survivors stormed a government rice warehouse in the typhoon-ravaged Philippines, an official said.

The United Nations’ humanitarian chief has warned that the growing number of Syrians fleeing the country’s increasingly brutal conflict – now four million and rising every day – is outstripping the international community’s ability to help.

The UN General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution welcoming positive changes in Burma but expressing serious concern at an upsurge of sectarian violence between Muslims and Buddhists in strife-torn Rakhine state.

Russia accused Western powers of "openly groups to take up arms in their fight to unseat President Bashar Assad.

Refugees are fleeing Syria in ever greater numbers, UN agencies said yesterday, as the conflict between President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and rebels intensifies.

Government troops fought back rebels near the airport of battle-scarred Aleppo, Syria’s state media said today, in the first official acknowledgement that combat had neared a strategic gateway to the country’s largest city.

Syrian government forces and militia have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity on civilians, a UN expert panel has concluded.

Regime forces strafed rebel-held districts in Aleppo with helicopter gunships and pounded them with shelling on the third day of a pitched battle for Syria’s commercial capital.

More than 200,000 Syrians have fled the city of Aleppo amid intense clashes between regime forces bombarding rebels who have seized large swathes of the city.

Syria was hit by a third lethal car bombing as UN teams readied for a government-led humanitarian mission and to work to launch a monitoring operation to end a year of bloodshed.

Two Syrian generals and a colonel have defected to Turkey, the country’s state-run television reported today.

Syria's deputy oil minister has announced his defection in an online video, making him the highest ranking official to abandon President Bashar Assad's regime since the country's uprising erupted a year ago.

The UN humanitarian chief entered the shattered Syrian district of Baba Amr, where activists accuse regime forces of trying to cover up evidence of execution-style killings and reprisal attacks following a bloody military siege.

United Nations humanitarian chief Valerie Amos has visited Baba Amr, becoming the first international official to enter the embattled Syrian district since fighting began.

UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos headed to the shattered central Syrian city of Homs on Wednesday, where activists have accused regime forces of trying to cover up evidence of a month-long military assault and alleged execution-style killings.

The United Nations humanitarian chief is heading to Syria to urge the government to allow relief workers access to the hardest-hit areas.

Every few years the dark side of humanity reminds us of how bestial, how savage we can be when we put aside all the constraints of civilised behaviour.

China's special envoy to Syria is expected to press authorities for a ceasefire even as Beijing remains firmly opposed to any foreign intervention in the conflict.

The United Nations refugee agency has said that around 2,000 people have fled Syria across the Lebanese border in the last two days.

The UK has withdrawn its diplomatic staff from Syria and closed the embassy in Damascus on security grounds, Foreign Secretary William Hague has announced.

The Syrian regime showed a new determination to crush its opponents, vowing to “cleanse” a rebel-held district in the besieged central city of Homs after nearly four weeks of shelling.

Former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan has been appointed the joint United Nations-Arab League envoy on the Syrian crisis with a mandate to bring an end to the violence and promote a peaceful political solution.

SOMALIA’S famine refugees, weakened by months of drought, yesterday began Islam’s punishing Ramadan fast amid the tents and shacks of the world’s largest refugee camp.

AS FOREIGN rescue workers combed debris to locate victims of Japan’s quake and tsunami, countries offered further aid from field hospitals to atomic physicists to address an unfolding nuclear crisis.

Libyan warplanes have launched a fresh air strike on rebel positions around a key oil port, trying to block fighters from advancing toward Muammar Gaddafi’s stronghold in the capital, Tripoli.

Libyan rebels today vowed to regroup and bring in heavy weapons after forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi pounded opposition fighters with helicopter gunships, artillery and rockets to stop their rapid advance toward the capital.

AFRICANS voiced their anger at a ceremony in Ghana to mark 200 years since Britain abolished the slave trade yesterday, with some saying they could not forget how the “white man” maltreated their ancestors.

BRITISH Labour MP Clare Short last night delivered a devastating indictment of Prime Minister Tony Blair and his style of government as she finally quit the Cabinet as International Development Secretary.

WHY should a bell be shaped like a bullet, you might ask, as you exit from the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi.