Two bomb blasts killed four people in north-western Baghdad, two days after a series of attacks claimed the lives of 30 in the capital and across the country, Iraqi officials said today.

High winds have beached a cargo ship off France’s Atlantic coast and some of the 220 tons of fuel in its hold is leaking, threatening a local beach.

Turkey’s prime minister has accused shoddy construction firms of murder after so many buildings collapsed in the country’s deadly earthquake.

Rescue workers have pulled three members of the same family from the rubble of Turkey's earthquake which has killed at least 370 people.

Government troops detained dozens of people overnight after cutting electricity in a Damascus neighbourhood, a Syrian rights group said today.

A car bomb killed nine people close to the north-western Pakistani city of Peshawar today, the latest in a series of attacks that are challenging recent police claims of progress against Islamist militants in the region.

A suicide bomber disguised as a security officer blew up the UN food agency’s Pakistan headquarters killing five people today.

President Barack Obama’s special envoy to Pakistan has praised the country’s “very significant” progress in taking back key territory from the Taliban and promised more weapons for the fight against extremists close to the Afghan border.

A suspected US missile strike killed at least five people today in a tribal region where Pakistan’s top Taliban commander is based, intelligence officials said.

SUSPECTED suicide attackers detonated a car bomb yesterday that destroyed a police building and sheared walls off a nearby office of Pakistan’s top intelligence service in Lahore. About 30 people were killed and at least 250 wounded.

A group of about 80 whales stranded on a remote coastline in southern Australia were battered to death on rocks before rescuers could reach them.

A roadside bomb killed an American soldier in Baghdad today, capping the bloodiest week for US troops in Iraq this year. Clashes persisted in Shiite areas, even as the biggest Shiite militia sought to rein in its fighters.

Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto accused President Pervez Musharraf of failing to stop the spread of Islamic militants and promised to crack down on the groups if she won next month’s parliamentary election.

A suicide bombing attack on a military convoy in Pakistan killed at least five civilians and one soldier today in troubled north-western Sunday, police said.

A 45-member delegation of Pakistani tribal elders began talks with militant leaders near the Afghan border today in a bid to stem the spiralling violence that erupted after Islamic extremists scrapped a peace deal.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have killed 17 insurgents in clashes in north-western Iran near the border with Turkey that saw four of its officers die, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported today.

US and Iraqi forces arrested one of Muqtada al-Sadr’s top aides today in Baghdad, his office said, as pressure increases on the radical Shiite cleric’s militia ahead of a planned security sweep aimed at stemming the sectarian violence ransacking the capital.

A bomb tore through a passenger bus in southern Sri Lanka today, killing at least 10 people and wounding dozens, police said, a day after six people died in a similar bus blast near the capital.

Iraqi security forces are doing everything they can to protect victims of sectarian violence in Baghdad, including families that are being driven from their homes in mixed neighbourhoods of Shiites and Sunni Arabs, a government official said today.

The Department of Foreign Affairs has said that the two Irish children caught up in a hostage drama in north-western Cambodia today are safe and well.

A man armed with a knife took several schoolchildren hostage in a north-western German town today – pulling them off a bus and holing up in a nearby house.

A moderate earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.1 struck Turkey’s southern Aegean coast, sending residents into the streets in panic, the Anatolia news agency reported. At least one person was injured.

A moderate earthquake centred in the Marmara Sea near Istanbul shook buildings in the Turkish city tonight. There were no immediate reports of any damage or casualties.

Hurricane Ivan pummelled the Cayman Islands with fierce winds that ripped off roofs and floodwaters that swamped homes, then strengthened to an extremely dangerous Category 5 storm as it headed for western Cuba today.

Twenty-five workers are believed to be trapped after a fire broke out inside a tunnel at a copper mine in north-western Turkey. Five other injured miners were rescued.

Two moderate earthquakes shook Turkey’s Aegean coast hours apart today.

A new high-speed passenger train derailed today in north-western Turkey, and officials said 36 people were killed.

POLICE discovered and defused a bomb planted in a school in a north-western Afghan province in which five humanitarian workers were ambushed and shot dead last week, an official said.