A team of European astrophysicists has been given almost €14m to map the black hole at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

Survivors from a luxury cruise ship that ran aground and tipped over, leaving at least three dead and 69 people still unaccounted for, today described a chaotic evacuation, as plates and glasses crashed and they crawled along upended hallways trying to reach safety.

At least three people have died after a luxury cruise ship ran aground off the coast of Tuscany, sending water pouring in through a 160ft gash in the hull and forcing the evacuation of some 4,200 people from the listing vessel.

Nato nations have formally agreed to start reducing troop levels in Afghanistan next year and hand over control of security to the Afghans in 2014.

Nato will start reducing troop levels in Afghanistan next year and hand over control of security to the Afghans in 2014 but will not abandon the country after that and let it slip back into chaos, Nato secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said today.

A new legal agreement committing the world to curb greenhouse gas emissions is unlikely to be completed before the end of 2011, two years later than originally envisaged, the United Nations' climate chief said.

The UN’s top climate official admitted today that a final global warming treaty will be impossible this year.

The key to a new global climate change agreement will be a deal between the United States and China, Tony Blair said today.

A private guard working for the international shipping company DHL opened fire and killed the company’s country director and his deputy today before turning the gun on himself, officials said.

A British man was among three people shot dead in an attack in the Afghan capital Kabul today, according to police officials.

THE Zoological Society of London has compiled a horrifying report that should set alarm bells ringing all over the world.

The industrial world is hurling more carbon into the atmosphere than ever before and governments have just a few years to avert calamitous climate change, the UN climate secretariat said today.

A new satellite-based information system will quickly spread environmental and health data across the world so that developing countries can anticipate catastrophes such as drought, storms and floods – for only about £700 (€1,050) in set-up costs.

The haze that has shrouded parts of southeast Asia this month is just one visible element of a much larger problem that kills hundreds of thousands of people in the region every year, the World Health Organisation said.

Afghanistan’s much delayed presidential election will take place on October 9, its top electoral official said today, but a parliamentary vote originally scheduled to be held simultaneously was put off until the spring.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has postponed for two months the process of approving a new constitution, his spokesman said today, but insisted that historic elections scheduled for next year will take place on time.

Osama bin Laden is thought to be leading around 1,000 al-Qaida fighters in defending his mountain stronghold of Tora Bora.

An agreement on powersharing among four Afghan factions is close as the talks run into their ninth day.

Rival Afghan factions were today trying to agree on the members of an interim government for the country, as a man believed to be a US citizen was found among captured Taliban fighters.

US Marines were today patrolling the desert near the Taliban’s last stronghold after Afghan warriors said they would take the airport then seize the city itself.

US air strikes targeted outnumbered and cornered followers of Osama bin Laden today as a prison uprising in northern Afghanistan stretched into its third day.

Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance see no role for so-called ‘‘moderate’’ Talibans in any future government, their foreign minister made clear today.

Japanese and EU officials have agreed to continue their efforts to persuade the US to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol to combat global warming.