Somalia's newly-appointed women's minister is under house arrest after being abducted by Islamist insurgents, family members said on Friday.

Gunmen seized 32-year-old Asha Osman Aqiil on Thursday in Balad, a town north of the capital Mogadishu, a day after she was named the country's minister for women and family affairs.

A fire on an overcrowded bus carrying flammable materials killed 41 passengers in central China on Friday, state television reported, in one of the country's worst road accidents this year.

The double-decker bus was taking people to southern Hunan province when it caught fire early on Friday morning on a highway, China Central Television (CCTV) said, adding the cause of the disaster is still being investigated.

Nuclear envoys from North and South Korea held rare talks in Indonesia on Friday, offering fresh hope for stalled six-nation efforts aimed at curbing Pyongyang's atomic program.

The meeting between South Korea's Wi Sung-Lac and his counterpart, Ri Yong-Ho, was the first-ever North-South meeting on nuclear issues outside the six-party format, a foreign ministry spokeswoman in Seoul told Agence France Presse.

China told the United States on Friday to respect Chinese "territorial integrity,” amid simmering tensions focused on the South China Sea.

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi made the comments to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a bilateral meeting on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, according to a spokesman from China's delegation.

Police have expanded their hacking inquiry beyond Rupert Murdoch's empire, asking for files from an earlier probe into the use of investigators by other British papers, regulators said on Thursday.

The 2006 report by the Information Commissioner's Office, called "What Price Privacy Now," alleged that Britain's middle-market Daily Mail newspaper made the most requests to private investigators for confidential information.

A U.S. Congress panel on Thursday rejected a proposal to cut off all aid to Pakistan due to concerns over the country's relationship with Islamic militants after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee easily rejected the measure, with five lawmakers voting yes and 39 voting no. But the bill in its current form would still impose tighter controls over aid, making it contingent on measurable progress by Pakistan.

Al-Qaida-inspired insurgents abducted and detained Somalia's newly appointed women's minister Thursday while she was on her way to take up office, officials and witnesses told Agence France Presse.

Asha Osman Aqiil was named women and family affairs minister on Wednesday. She was kidnapped by the Shebab fighters in Balad town, some 30 kilometers north of the capital Mogadishu.

British forces have detained two British nationals in Afghanistan, authorities in London said Thursday, amid reports they were suspected of plotting against Britain or fighting with the Taliban.

"We can confirm that British forces have detained two individuals in Afghanistan who claim to be British nationals," the Ministry of Defense said in a statement.

A bomb attack on Thursday killed at least two Pakistani oil workers in a remote town in the country's troubled southwest that borders Afghanistan and Iran, police and doctors said.

The blast hit a convoy of Pakistan's government-run Oil and Gas Development Company (OGDCL) in the mineral rich province of Baluchistan, where rebels are fighting for autonomy and demanding a greater share of natural resources.

Attorney-General Robert McClelland said Thursday Australia's terror threat level would not change despite an image of Sydney's iconic Opera House appearing in an online magazine linked to al-Qaida.

The landmark building is featured in the latest edition of "Inspire", an English-language site that deals with bomb-making and terrorism.