World

President Barack Obama declared the world safer Tuesday after a 47-nation summit agreed to a four-year deadline on securing vulnerable nuclear materials from terrorists.

The child sex abuse scandal scorching the Catholic Church worsened Tuesday with lawmakers, doctors and gay activists slamming an attempt by the Vatican to shift the blame for the pedophilia to homosexual priests.

Obama called the 47-nation summit in Washington, the biggest hosted by a US leader since 1945, to try to secure loose materials in military and civilian stockpiles worldwide within four years.

The stand-off between Red Shirt protesters and the government continued on the bloodstained streets of Bangkok Tuesday, as Thailand's foreign minister offered an olive branch for change.

The pilots of a plane that crashed and killed Poland's president had received explicit weather warnings before they attempted to land at a fog-bound Russian airport, investigators said Monday.

WHO is forming a panel of 29 external experts following accusations that the agency-led international reaction to A(H1N1) influenza was overblown and may have been tainted by commercial interests.

President Barack Obama warned that Al-Qaeda would not hesitate to use a nuclear weapon against the United States, before hosting a global summit aimed at thwarting such a nightmare scenario.

Tensions remained high on the bloodstained streets of Bangkok on Monday after the country's worst political violence in almost two decades left 21 dead and over 800 injured.

The body of Poland's president Lech Kaczynski arrived back home Sunday as his stunned nation mourned the elite victims of a jet crash in Russia that has left intense focus on the pilots' last actions.

Investigators trawled through flight recordings and debris Sunday to work out why pilots of a jet crash which killed Poland's president ignored warnings not to land, as the nation began a week of mourning.

"It is becoming clear that Ahbisit and the old elite are bringing the country towards a fascist dictatorship. Thailand has entered a new phase of class war."

Cuba's leadership does not want to normalise ties with Washington because they would "lose their excuses" for the country's economic stagnation, says Hillary Clinton.

Kyrgyzstan's interim leader has offered president Kurmanbek Bakiyev safe passage out of the strategic Central Asia nation, but only if he stands down after the bloody uprising that toppled him.

Flags of the old apartheid South Africa and neo-Nazi emblems flew high at the funeral of slain white supremacist leader Eugene Terre'Blanche Friday attended by thousands.

Envoys of six major powers met for nearly three hours behind closed doors Thursday to weigh new UN sanctions on Iran and said further talks would be held here and in capital cities in coming days.

The Thai capital Bangkok was braced for more protests Friday as anti-government Red Shirts vowed to defy a state of emergency and again take to the streets.

A Qatari diplomat who sparked a national security scare by joking about setting fire to his shoe on an airplane will be released without charge, a US law enforcement official told AFP on Thursday.

Opponents of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev took control of Kyrgyzstan after a day of deadly violence that ended with the leader fleeing the capital of the strategic Central Asian state.

Bangkok was under a state of emergency on Thursday after anti-government protesters stormed the Thai parliament, but the demonstrators remained defiant and said they were ready for "war".

Benjamin Netanyahu said he doubts the sanctions being mulled against Iran would be tough enough to rein in the Islamic republic's nuclear ambitions.

The 7.2-magnitude earthquake which hit Sinabang, Aceh, in Sumatra early today injured 21 people on Simeulue Island, four of them badly.

Anti-government protesters stormed Thailand's parliament Wednesday, smashing through the gates with a truck, as mass demonstrations caused chaos in Bangkok's tourist hub for a fifth day.

The most intense rain in half a century triggered flooding and mudslides that killed at least 95 people in southeastern Brazil, most of them in the Rio de Janeiro area, authorities said Tuesday.

Britain entered its first full day of campaigning Wednesday for a May 6 general election, with party leaders set for a final parliamentary showdown ahead of the vote.