US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Thursday that almost two years of intensive engagement efforts by the Obama administration with Asia is aimed at sustaining and strengthening America's leadership role in the region; Kazinform refers to China Daily.

Clinton made the remarks in her speech on US Asia strategy in Honolulu, Hawaii, where she started her sixth Asia trip on her tenure.

She said US goals in Asia include sustaining and strengthening US leadership role, improvin...

The presidents of Russian and the United States will hold a bilateral meeting during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Japan due on November 13-14, the Kremlin's press service said.

Ahead of the summit, Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama will also participate in the G20 summit in South Korea on November 11-12, it added.

"The Russian and U.S. presidents will hold a full-scale meeting on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum summit, whic...

The armed forces of South Korea were put on high alert this week. This has been done in connection with the upcoming summit of the leaders of the Group of Twenty due to be held in Seoul on November 11-12, in order to rebuff any attempts to disrupt the forum made by North Korea or international terrorism, a spokesman for the Korean army's Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Friday.

To this end, he said, the armed forces are working closely with American troops stationed in the south on the Korea...

Russian and U.S. drug control services have carried out their first joint anti-narcotics operation in Afghanistan, destroying drugs supplies worth more than $1 billion, the head of Russia's Federal Drug Control Service said on Friday.

The operation, during which almost 1 metric ton of heroin was destroyed, took place in a remote area near the Afghan border with Pakistan, Viktor Ivanov said during a news conference in Moscow with Deputy Head of Mission of the U.S. Embassy in Russia Eric Ru...

Rescuers searching islands ravaged by a tsunami off western Indonesia raised the death toll to 343 Thursday as more bodies were found and said the number is likely to climb higher because hundreds of missing people may have been swept away.

Elsewhere in Indonesia, the volcano that killed 33 people this week began erupting again, though there were no reports of new injuries or damage. Mourners held a mass burial Thursday during a lull in Mount Merapi's rumblings.

President Susilo Ba...

Residents of US states from North Dakota to North Carolina are cleaning up after a fierce storm unleashed driving rain, blustery winds, heavy snow and 56 tornadoes in just two days.

The National Weather Service said the storm had caused the second-largest October tornado outbreak on record.

Injuries from the storm have been reported in states across the US.

Conditions in many states returned to normal on Thursday as the storm made its way north-east toward Ontario.

Bu...

The unemployment rate of the euro zone hit a record high of 10.1 percent in September, the European Union's (EU) statistical bureau Eurostat said on Friday.

It was further up from 10 percent in the previous month and higher than 9.8 percent registered in September 2009.

For the 27-nation EU, the jobless rate remained stable for the seventh consecutive month at 9.6 percent in September. It was 9.3 percent a year ago.

Eurostat estimated

...

U.S. citizens' optimism in the country's system of government has dropped to the lowest point in 36 years, and the public's belief that America is the greatest nation on earth has decreased significantly over the past few decades, a survey conducted by ABC News and Yahoo News shows.

"These results... coming before next week's midterm elections, suggest that public disenchantment extends beyond its economic and political roots to broader questions about the country's governance and Am...

More than 100 people have been killed and many are missing after a tsunami triggered by an earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia.

Scores of houses were destroyed by waves after the 7.7 magnitude quake, which struck 20km (13 miles) under the ocean floor near the Mentawai islands.

Ten villages on the islands were swept away by the tsunami, a disaster official told the AFP news agency.

Damage and rough weather are delaying efforts to reach the affected area.

Hen...

The UN General Assembly adopted the 19th resolution condemning the U.S. economic, trade and financial embargo on Cuba on Tuesday.

The resolution was adopted with 187 votes to two. Three countries abstained.

Delegates welcomed the resolution with applause, and many delegation members approached Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez to congratulate him.

Cuba presented the first draft resolution to that effect to the UN General Assembly in 1992, and the resolution gained suppo...

Two parties out of five that won the recent parliamentary election in Kyrgyzstan have agreed on Tuesday to form a ruling majority in the republic's new parliament.

A spokesman for the pro-government Social Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan told the Interfax news agency that his party was ready to create a coalition together with the Respublika party.

"The parties have reached a tentative agreement to work jointly within a possible ruling coalition. They are now discussing common ...

Paul the Octopus, the tentacled tipster who fascinated football fans by correctly predicting results at this year's World Cup, died Tuesday; Kazinform refers to China Daily.

Paul had reached the octopus old age of 2 1/2 years and died in his tank on Tuesday morning in an aquarium in the western German city of Oberhausen, spokeswoman Ariane Vieregge said.

Paul seemed to be in good shape when he was checked late Monday, but he did not make it through the night. He died of natural cau...

The number of fatal victims in Haiti due to the cholera outbreak has increased to 369 and more than 3,000 people are infected, Haitian authorities said on Monday.

According to information reaching here from Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, the Haitian authorities said that the total number of infected people is 3,015.

The authorities said that 46 percent of the deaths were hospitalized patients, while the other 54 percent was the people without access to health services.

Spa...

BP says it has sold its stake in four mature oil and gas fields in the Gulf of Mexico to Marubeni Oil and Gas for $650 million (euro466 million).

The oil company has been selling assets to raise cash to pay for the damage caused by the disastrous blowout of its Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico.

BP had acquired the four fields in March when it bought a range of assets in the Gulf, Brazil and Azerbaijan from Devon Energy in a $7 billion deal.

Source: ...

Iran has begun loading fuel into the core of its first nuclear power plant, state television has reported.

Iranian and Russian engineers started moving nuclear fuel into the main reactor building at Bushehr in August but this was halted and the work delayed.

Russia will operate the facility in southern Iran, supplying its nuclear fuel and taking away the nuclear waste.

Iran says the plant will begin generating electricity in early 2011.

German engineers began work on ...

US space shuttle Discovery is scheduled to begin an 11-day mission to the International Space Station with a launch at 4:40 pm EDT (20:40 GMT) on November 1, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said Monday.

The mission is Discovery's final scheduled flight, and the fourth and final shuttle mission planned for 2010.

Discovery's launch date was announced Monday at the conclusion of a flight readiness review at Kennedy Space Center in Orlando, Fla. During the m...

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ordered the takeover of the local unit of US glass bottle firm Owens-Illinois on Monday, part of a drive to nationalize large swathes of the food processing and distribution business; Kazinform refers to The Arab News.

Since an election last month that left the socialist leader's party with a reduced majority in parliament, he has nationalized a large fertilizer factory, a motor lubricants firm and a huge swathe of land belonging to a wealthy British famil...

Source: KAZINFORM

Tsunami after strong quake in West Sumatra of Indonesia on Monday evening killed 23 people and left 169 others missing, emergency relief aids will be sent immediately, officials said on Tuesday.

The tsunami hit two islands of Pagaiselatan Mentawai and Pagaiutara Mentawai in West Sumatra after the 7.2 magnitude quake, West Sumatra Disaster and Mitigation Management Agency Ade Edward told Xinhua by phone from West Su...

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Security Council today strongly condemned the suicide attack on the United Nations compound in Afghanistan's western city of Herat, where members of staff of the UN mission in the country and other agencies are based.

There were no casualties among the UN staff, but some security guards were wounded, the spokesperson of the Secretary-General said in a statement. A number of assailants were killed in the attack, and the UN is conducting a full investig...

The blood vessels of obese teenagers look more like those found in middle-aged people, say Canadian researchers.

A study of 63 children, whose average age was 13, found signs of "stiffening" in the aorta - the largest artery in the body.

The British Columbia Children's Hospital team said it was an early indicator of heart disease.

The British Heart Foundation described child obesity as a "ticking public health time bomb".

One of the key changes in ...

The death toll from a cholera outbreak in Haiti has risen to 253, said the country's health department on Sunday.

Gabriel Thimote, director-general of Haiti's Health Department, told a news conference a total of 3,015 cases have been reported so far in the impoverished island nation that is still recovering from January's devastating earthquake.

"We have registered a diminishing in numbers of deaths and of hospitalized people in the most critical areas...The tendency is that i...

Four Taliban insurgents attacked the UN office in Herat city the capital of Herat province in west Afghanistan on Saturday and all the attackers were killed, deputy to provincial police chief Dillawar Shah Dilawar said.

"Four terrorists driving a car this morning. One of them, after getting out from the car, blew himself up next to the entry gate of United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) in Herat city enabling another to enter the compound," Dilawar told Xinhua...

Two experts from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) will arrive on Monday to Belarus for an independent inquiry into the death of Belarusian opposition journalist and human rights activist Oleg Bebenin.

"Two expert criminalists from Norway and Sweden will arrive in our country on October 25," said Andrey Savinykh, a spokesman for the Belarusian Foreign Ministry.

Bebenin, 36, was one of the leading figures of the human rights organization Charte...

It's a good news/bad news situation for believers in the 2012 Mayan apocalypse. The good news is that the Mayan "Long Count" calendar may not end on Dec 21, 2012 and, by extension, the world may not end along with it. The bad news for prophecy believers? If the calendar doesn't end in December 2012, no one knows when it actually will - or if it has already; Kazinform refers to China Daily.

A new critique, published as a chapter in the new textbook "Calendars and Years II: A...

A bomb exploded inside a passenger bus Thursday in the southern Philippines, a military official said, Kazinform refers to Trend News.

Regional military spokesman Lt. Col. Randolph Cabangbang told Xinhua that a unit of Rural Transit was traversing around 10:40 a. m. along the national highway in  Dalapitan, Matalam town in the province of North Cotabato when an improvised bomb planted inside the truck went off.

"We are still determining if there were casualties," Cab...

President of the United States Barack Obama plans to pay an official visit to Pakistan in 2011 and invited the Pakistani president to visit Washington, a statement from the White House said.

"The President explained that he would not be stopping in Pakistan during his trip to Asia next month, and committed to visiting Pakistan in 2011, as well as welcoming President [Asif Ali] Zardari to Washington," the statement said.

Obama met on Wednesday with the Pakistani delegation[/Asif]...

A Saudi prince has been found guilty of murdering his servant at a hotel in central London.

 Bandera Abdulaziz, 32, was found beaten and strangled in the Landmark Hotel, Marylebone, on 15 February 2010.

The Old Bailey was told the assault by Saud Abdulaziz bin Nasser al Saud had a "sexual element" and he had attacked Mr Abdulaziz many times before.

Al Saud, 34, had admitted manslaughter but denied murdering Mr Abdulaziz. He will be sentenced on Wednesday.
...

Ukraine's former economics minister, who was on the international wanted list, has been detained in the Czech republic, the press service of the Ukrainian interior ministry reported on Tuesday, referring to the Czech national Interpol bureau.

Bogdan Danilishin, the former economics minister with the Timoshenko cabinet, is charged with office abuse. He is accused of misappropriating 1.8 million U.S. dollars while organizing state procurements for the country's defence ministry.

He w...

Russia's upgraded Soyuz-2.1a space carrier placed six U.S. Globalstar-2 communications satellites into orbit on Tuesday, a spokesman for the Russian Space Agency said.

The spacecraft equipped with a new Fregat booster blasted off at 9:11 Moscow time (17.11 GMT) from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan.

Globalstar is a low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite-based telecommunications system founded by U.S.-based Loral Corporation and Qualcomm Inc. It provides high-quality satellite voice...

As many as 11 persons were injured in a bus-truck collision in the Russian resort city of Sochi, a police spokesman said on Tuesday.

"Eyewitnesses contacted traffic police to report the traffic accident. They said a heavy-duty truck collided with a passenger bus carrying people at the mouth of the Khosta tunnel," the spokesman said.

According to the spokesman, the accident was blamed on the truck driver who had not let the bus pass along the main road towards downtown Soc...