North Korea today boasted that it successfully tested a nuclear weapon, sparking a barrage of global condemnation and threats of harsh sanctions over an underground blast that appeared to thrust the volatile communist state into the elite club of nuclear-armed nations.

A major earthquake hit a distant, sparsely-populated region of Russia’s Far East early today, causing unknown damage and casualties.

Indonesia’s bird-flu toll rose to seven today with the confirmed deaths of two young women, as the cash-strapped government acknowledged it couldn’t fight a widening outbreak alone.

AN AIDS epidemic is “galloping” through impoverished Papua New Guinea, spread by polygamous marriages and inadequate government health and education programmes, United Nations officials warn.