SRINAGAR: Security forces imposed a strict curfew in Indian Kashmir on Saturday where anti-India protests have claimed 55 lives in two months as the region geared up for a major national holiday.Authorities stepped up the curfew in the main city Srinagar after four people were killed

BEIJING: China on Saturday announced a national day of mourning as millions in the country`s west struggled with more rain and the aftermath of mudslides that have killed more than 1,150 people.Authorities warned torrential rains would continue into Sunday and said further flash floods,

Pakistan: Pakistan`s president has directed that there should be no official celebrations of Independence Day on Saturday as the country tries to cope with devastating floods.Asif Ali Zardari will instead spend the day touring affected regions in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab provinces.He

The United States is sending firefighting equipment to Russia to help deal with 500 wildfires burning across the country, one of which threatens a nuclear base, reports mail online.The blazes have been sparked by the hottest summer ever recorded in Russia, which has seen the death rate in

President Barack Obama on Friday backed construction of a proposed mosque and Muslim cultural center near the site of the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York -- a project opposed by U.S. conservatives and many New Yorkers."As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have

SUKKUR Pakistan : Disease outbreaks pose grave risks to victims of Pakistan`s worst floods in decades, aid agencies said on Friday, causing fresh concern about already complicated relief efforts.The floods, triggered by torrential monsoon downpours, have engulfed Pakistan`s Indus river

BEIJING : Heavy rain across western China has caused more mudslides and flooding, killing at least 29 people and trapping more than 10,500 in the latest natural disasters to hit the country, state media said on Friday.In Longnan, in poor and remote Gansu province, 20 died and more than

WASHINGTON : Consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren discussed the new U.S. consumer agency at the White House but no announcement is imminent about who will lead the agency, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Friday.Gibbs said Warren was at the White House on Thursday. She spoke with

UNITED NATIONS : The U.N. humanitarian chief on Friday urged Sudanese authorities to allow humanitarian aid workers into a Darfur refugee camp that they have been prevented from entering for nearly two weeks.Aid agencies have been barred from the Kalma Camp for internally displace persons

MUMBAI: Indian doctors warned earlier this year about the threat from a new multi-drug resistant "superbug" -- months before a British study that New Delhi has condemned for scaremongering.A team of researchers from a leading private hospital in Mumbai came to similar conclusions as the

TEHRAN: Iran is to launch its first nuclear power reactor next week, the Islamic republic and Russia which helped build the plant said on Friday after years of delays to the highly sensitive project."We are preparing to transfer the fuel inside the plant next week ... Then we will need

PARIS: Giant iceberg that snapped away from Greenland last week is a signal that global warming is causing the island`s continent-sized ice cap to melt faster than expected, scientists say.The 250-square-kilometre (100-square-mile) chunk, four times the size of Manhattan, broke away from

COLOMBO: A court martial convicted Sri Lanka`s former army chief Sarath Fonseka on Friday of meddling in politics while on active service and stripped him of his rank and medals."The guilty verdict was read out to General Fonseka at the court martial a short while ago," a senior military

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama will Friday join an evening meal to break the daily fast observed by Muslims during the holy month of Ramadan, the White House said.The hosting of Iftar will be held in a dining room at the White House, his spokesman said.Obama participated in a

BEIJING: Torrential rains on Friday battered several parts of western China, killing at least 19 people and heightening fears of a disease outbreak in a mudslide-ravaged town where more than 1,100 have died. Health authorities said survivors of the deadly floods and landslides in Zhouqu,

TOKYO: Nearly 200 Japanese centenarians are missing, officials said Thursday, with the total likely to rise amid a nationwide search after the discovery of the 30-year-old corpse of a man registered as aged 111.In the western city of Kobe alone, the whereabouts of 105 out of 847

COLOMBO: Sri Lankan police arrested three Iranian men and seized a haul of methamphetamine with an estimated street value of tens of millions of dollars, a spokesman said Thursday.Two men travelling from Qatar were arrested Wednesday when customs officers at the island`s international

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama on Wednesday offered best wishes to Muslims in the United States and around the world as they observe the holy fasting month of Ramadan. "All of us must remember that the world we want to build -- and the changes that we want to make -- must begin

COLOMBO: A government-appointed panel tasked with investigating the final years of Sri Lanka`s civil war opened on Wednesday in Colombo. The eight-member panel will hear testimony on five separate days in the capital and two days in Vavuniya, near the former war zone, an official

BAQUBA: Isurgents early Wednesday lured Iraqi troops into a booby-trapped house in Diyala province which then exploded killing eight soldiers, an army officer told AFP. Three other bodies were found under the rubble, but it was not immediately clear if they were of insurgents or