Circle Oil is set to further develop its Middle Eastern assets later this year with both drilling and farm-out activity planned.

IN May, this column celebrated the extraordinary lifestyle of the red-necked phalarope. After years of research, ornithologists thought they knew almost everything about the strange ways of this little wader but they were wrong. A phalarope from Shetland has confounded everybody by travelling 16,000km on migration. It’s not just the distance covered which is astonishing but the bird’s destination.

Rescuers are struggling to help thousands of people injured and left homeless after their houses collapsed in a massive earthquake in south-western Pakistan, as the death toll rose overnight to 210, officials said.

Barack Obama said tonight the US had concluded that the Syrian government carried out a large-scale chemical weapons attack against civilians.

The Iranian navy has rescued 28 crew members from a Chinese ship hijacked by pirates, state TV reported.

Yemeni government forces regained control of a strategic gateway in the south today after intense three-day shelling of al Qaida hideouts in the area that left 43 militants dead, military and medical officials said.

SIX years ago Rory McIlroy borrowed an official photographer’s long lens to walk inside the ropes so he could get close to boyhood idol Tiger Woods.

Political tensions between the US and Iran in and around the Persian Gulf gave way to photos of rescued fishermen happily wearing US Navy baseball caps after a dramatic rescue from the clutches of Somali pirates.

THE same US aircraft carrier group that Iran warned not to return to the Gulf has rescued 13 Iranians held hostage for weeks by pirates in the Arabian Sea, the Pentagon said yesterday.

The media chief for al-Qaida’s Yemeni branch has been killed along with six other people in an airstrike, Yemen’s Defence Ministry said today.

Sea piracy worldwide surged to 266 attacks in the first half this year, up 36% from a year ago, as Somali pirates became bolder and raided more vessels, a global maritime watchdog has said.

AT least 40 al-Qaida prisoners have escaped from jail in Yemen.

At least 40 al-Qaida prisoners escaped from jail in Yemen today.

A SOUTH Korean court has begun a trial for five Somali pirates captured during a raid on a hijacked ship in the Arabian Sea.

America has said it is “inconceivable” that Osama bin Laden did not have a support system in Pakistan which enabled him to remain in the country for long periods.

A roadside bomb ripped through a bus taking Pakistani navy staff to work in Karachi today, killing three people in the third such attack in the country’s largest city this week.

Pirates holding three children and their parents have said they will kill them if any rescue attempt is made.

Floodwaters which have devastated Pakistan for five weeks headed to the Arabian Sea today after swallowing another two towns, but the challenges of delivering emergency aid to eight million people remained.

Thousands of people streamed back to the historic southern city of Thatta today where new levees hastily built from clay and stone held back floodwaters that have inundated much of Pakistan.

PAKISTAN ordered 300,000 people to evacuate a southern city after waters breached its defences as the United Nations warned yesterday the country’s worst humanitarian crisis was deepening.

Pakistani officials today urged anyone left in three southern towns to evacuate immediately as water broke through an embankment, endangering areas previously untouched by the country’s flooding disaster.

PAKISTAN’S medical system has been badly hit by weeks of flooding, with hundreds of health facilities damaged and tens of thousands of medical workers displaced, the prime minister said yesterday as the country braced for the spread of disease.

Pakistan is bracing itself for countrywide outbreaks of disease after the weeks of flooding damaged hospitals and clinics and turned tens of thousands of medical workers into refugees.

Pakistan’s president said it will take at least three years to recover from the floods that are battering the country.

THE world has given or pledged more than $800 million (€630m) to help Pakistan cope with massive floods, the foreign minister said as a surging river in the south led authorities to urge thousands more people to evacuate.

About 150,000 Pakistanis were forced to move to higher ground as floodwaters from a freshly swollen Indus River submerged dozens more towns and villages in the south, a government spokesman said today.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has urged the world to speed up aid to Pakistan.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived in flood-ravaged Pakistan today to boost relief efforts as the 20 million people made homeless grew increasingly desperate.

INDIAN coastguards yesterday battled choppy seas, monsoon rain and strong winds to contain oil from a badly listing container ship that collided with another vessel off the city of Mumbai.

ACCORDING to ornithologist Eric Dempsey, three red-necked phalaropes visited a site in the midlands this summer.

Pakistan’s navy successfully test-fired a series of missiles and torpedoes today in what it called a message to “nefarious” forces – an apparent reference to long-time rival India.

THE Taliban’s top military commander has been arrested in a joint CIA-Pakistani operation in Pakistan in a major victory against the insurgents as US troops push into their heartland in southern Afghanistan, officials said yesterday.

Chilling tapes of the Mumbai massacre gunmen calmly discussing killing their hostages over the phone were released today.

THE sites targeted by gunmen in Mumbai include luxury hotels, a busy station, a restaurant, a cinema, a Jewish centre and a hospital.

Fighting continued today in the middle of Mumbai as chaos and confusion surrounded terrorist attacks that killed more than 100 people.

SOMALI pirates have hijacked a Yemeni ship loaded with steel in the Gulf of Aden, in the Arabian Sea, officials said yesterday, a day after local sources said the gang holding a Saudi supertanker demanded a $15 million (€11.5m) ransom.

REPS 4 will be worth at least €7,220 per year to participating farmers. Not only does joining it make economic sense for farmers but it is now the politically correct thing to do.

International flights were delayed and thousands of US commuters were unable to get to work today as torrential rain flooded New York’s subways and rail lines.

Floods due to a cyclone and rain have left as many as 100 people dead in south-western Pakistan, a senior relief official said, as the government appealed for donations of tents to shelter about 1 million people left homeless by the flooding.

Helicopters were today being used to airdrop urgent relief aid to some of the more than 400,000 people battered by monsoon-spawned flooding in coastal areas of Pakistan.

Thousands of people were stranded on rooftops and tree branches today as cyclone-spawned floods surged through towns and villages of Pakistan’s coastline.

A POWERFUL cyclone lashed Pakistan’s southern coast on yesterday, killing at least 14 people, leaving dozens more missing and forcing tens of thousands to flee their homes.

Tens of thousands of Pakistanis were today fleeing to higher ground to avoid a tropical cyclone that was expected to lash the coastline with torrential rains and high winds.

The US Navy is launching an investigation into how a nuclear-powered submarine hit a Japanese merchant ship near the busy shipping lanes of the Straits of Hormuz.