The chance of finding any survivors from a military plane crash in a remote hunting reserve in mid-western Nepal is nil, the Nepal army said Wednesday after recovering four bodies.
The Britten-Norman Islander plane with six Nepalese nationals on board was returning to the capital Kathmandu from a rescue mission beside the Indian border when it lost contact with the ground on Tuesday.
Full StoryFrench President Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday voiced deep concern over a U.S.-alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington and said the West should harden sanctions against Tehran.
"The Americans have given us extremely precise information which shows the credibility of this information and the drift of the Iranian leaders is extremely worrying," he said in an interview to Agence France Presse and French radio stations RCJ and Radio J.
Full StoryPakistan is willing to hold peace talks with Islamist militants if they surrender their weapons first, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said Tuesday.
"We have received messages from banned outfits and militant organizations for reconciliation and we have conveyed these messages to our leadership," Malik told reporters in Quetta, the capital of troubled Baluchistan province.
Full StoryFrance's opposition on Tuesday called for the resignation of the head of the country's domestic intelligence agency, a friend of President Nicolas Sarkozy, after he was charged over spying on a journalist.
DCRI spy agency boss Bernard Squarcini was charged Monday with violating confidential correspondence, illegally collecting data and violating the confidentiality of sources of a journalist with the daily Le Monde.
Full StoryA car bomb exploded in Mogadishu Tuesday near a meeting involving two Kenyan ministers after Shebab rebels promised Nairobi all-out retaliation for its unprecedented military operation inside Somalia.
Two days after declaring war on Somalia's Islamist insurgency, which it blames for a string of kidnappings, Kenya's forces advanced on a strategic rebel-held town deep inside southern Somalia.
Full StoryA Swedish court on Tuesday convicted 23 women of possessing child pornography in a case that has drawn widespread attention because child pornography perpetrators are usually men.
The Falun district court in central Sweden handed the women, who are aged between 38 and 70, suspended sentences and ordered them to pay fines ranging from 2,500 kronor to 18,000 kronor ($375 to $2,691, 273 to 1,965 Euros).
Full StoryBritain's Treasury said Tuesday it had frozen the assets of five men in connection with the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States.
The finance ministry confirmed that it had acted under the Terrorist Asset Freezing Act, after ministers pledged action in response to the purported plan to kill Saudi envoy Adel Al-Jubeir in a bomb attack.
Full StoryKenyan troops using aerial cover advanced Tuesday on a strategic rebel-held Somali town, even as Nairobi police stepped up security for fear of reprisal attacks by Islamists.
"Our forces will be concentrating on operations in Afmadow region today, they started moving there late on Monday," said Kenyan army spokesman Major Emmanuel Chirchir.
Full StorySoldiers, civil servants and families worked frantically Tuesday to add more than 1 million sandbags to Bangkok's vulnerable northern flood defenses after the city's governor warned they were needed to keep waters from swamping the capital.
Gov. Sukhumbhand Paribatra said late Monday that a 6-kilometer (3.7-mile) flood wall on the edge of the city's suburbs was vulnerable from massive pools of runoff flowing down from the north, signaling the threat to the city was still grave. He said the wall needed to be reinforced by Wednesday night.
Full StoryHeavy rains pounded Central America on Tuesday, where more than 80 people have died in mudslides and flooding over the past week as swollen rivers destroyed bridges and submerged roads.
Authorities have gone on high alert across the mountainous region, home to 42 million people, as the rains have shown no sign of abating.
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