Poland will wait until after Sunday’s state funeral for President Lech Kaczynski to decide when to hold an early election to replace him.

Thousands of mourners threw flowers on a slow-moving hearse and joined an enormous viewing line at Warsaw’s Presidential Palace to pay their respects to Lech Kaczynski and his wife as their bodies lay in state.

The body of Poland's first lady was flown home from Russia to an emotional welcome today.

PRESIDENT Mary McAleese yesterday shed her footwear as a mark of respect on a visit to one of Turkey’s most sacred religious sites.

From an Antarctic research base and the Great Pyramids of Egypt to the Empire State Building in New York and the Sears Tower in Chicago, illuminated patches of the globe went dark for Earth Hour, a campaign to highlight the threat of climate change.

Preparations for the anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War wound up in a flurry of activity today in the former capital of South Vietnam, with red flags lining the broad boulevard where Communist tanks rolled into the city 30 years ago.

THE Polish president spelt out his compromise proposals for the new EU Constitution in Warsaw yesterday, bringing Taoiseach Bertie Ahern an important step closer to finalising the constitution in June.

His personal zoo has lions, cheetahs and a bear. His store has a million dollars worth of fine wines, liquors and heroin. His house has Cuban cigars, cases of champagne and downloaded pictures of prostitutes.

THE presidential Old Palace complex on the west bank of the Tigris River in Baghdad has come under renewed attack from US forces after they secured the city’s international airport yesterday.

US President George W Bush has made the first visit by an American head of state to Peru three days after a car bombing near the US Embassy killed nine people.

Hundreds of Islamic clerics met in the rocket-damaged Presidential Palace in Kabul today to decide whether to extradite terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden or to declare a holy war against the United States if its forces attack Afghanistan.

Joseph Estrada has quit as President of the Philippines with Vice President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo being quickly sworn in.