RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazilian police said all hostages taken Saturday by heavily armed gunmen who stormed an upscale Rio hotel have been released, adding that one person was killed in a shootout and nine suspects were arrested.The incident began when a group of heavily armed criminals

JERUSALEM: Five years ago on Sunday, the last of 8,000 Jewish settlers were pulled out of the Gaza Strip, some kicking and screaming, in a move that remains controversial in Israel to this day.Israel`s handling of the evacuees has been widely seen as a test case for a potentially much

WASHINGTON: The United States sees no "proliferation risk" from Iran`s Russian-built first nuclear power plant at Bushehr that was loaded with fuel Saturday, the State Department said.The Russian involvement in the reactor, intended for civilian purposes, "underscores that Iran does not

CAIRO: Two Italians were arrested at Cairo airport trying to smuggle out a Van Gogh painting stolen from a museum earlier on Saturday, Egypt`s Culture Minister Faruq Hosni told AFP."Two Italians, a man and a woman, were arrested while trying to leave the country with the painting," Hosni

ISLAMABAD: Nearly a month after Pakistan`s worst ever natural disaster flooded a fifth of the country and hit 20 million people, the spectres of social unrest and Islamist extremism are stalking the nation.Torrential rains have had a catastrophic impact on the impoverished, nuclear-armed

MELBOURNE: Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard Sunday reassured voters she would deliver "stable and effective" government as parties try to cobble a coalition government after inconclusive elections.Gillard laid out her claim to remain as leader, saying her Labor party had won the

MOSCOW: Russian security forces Saturday killed a top militant suspected of organising the deadly suicide attacks on the Moscow metro and who was reportedly married to one of the female bombers.Magomedali Vagabov was killed in a clash with security forces in the Caucasus region of

BANGALORE: A minister in southern India has been fired after 24 beggars died in one week at a camp for the destitute in the high-tech city of Bangalore.Karnataka social welfare minister D. Sudhakar was relieved of his post following the deaths of 24 beggars at the state-run camp in

PESHAWAR: A bomb blast killed six anti-Taliban militia fighters in Pakistan`s northwestern tribal belt on Saturday and wounded five others, officials said.The remote controlled attack hit a checkpoint manned by volunteers from an anti-Taliban militia in Mohmand, a tribal district close to

JERUSALEM: Israel and the Palestinians accepted on Friday an invitation by the United States and other powers to restart direct talks on September 2 in a modest step toward forging a deal within 12 months to create a Palestinian state and peacefully end one of the world`s most intractable

BEIJING: Three people were missing and more than 50,000 evacuated from a city on Saturday after flooding along the Yalu river, which forms the border with North Korea, officials and state media said.About 230 homes have collapsed in the city of Dandong and some transport, power and

PORT-AU-PRINCE: International Hip-Hop star Wycleff was excluded late Friday from Haiti`s November presidential election following a long deliberation by the country`s electoral council.The decision, which was announced by the council, was immediately accepted by the candidate, who

SYDNEY: Two Australian soldiers were killed and two wounded by a bomb blast in Afghanistan, officials said on Saturday, taking the country`s death toll in the conflict to 20.The announcement came as Australia held national elections in which both main parties have pledged their support

BUCHAREST: Europe`s Roma communities, at the centre of an immigration row in France, are often driven out by poverty from their homes in Romania and Bulgaria, the European Union`s two most impoverished members."Here we are like vagabonds. We don`t have work, we have nothing," said

KARACHI: With entire towns and villages swallowed up by Pakistan`s devastating floods, experts say it could take years to solve a shelter crisis now facing up to 4.6 million people camped out under open skies.The catastrophic floods swamped a fifth of Pakistan -- an area the size of

BEIJING: Police in China have arrested six people and detained 41 others for allegedly distributing milk powder tainted with the same chemical which killed infants in a 2008 scandal, state media said Saturday.Three of the six were employees of a factory in the northwestern province of

SYDNEY: Australia faced the "more and more likely" prospect of a hung parliament Saturday, with neither the government nor the opposition looking assured of an election majority, party officials said. "I think a hung parliament is looking more and more likely," said Senator Nick Minchin,

BUSHEHR, August 21, 2010 (AFP) - Iran on Saturday begins transferring fuel into its Russian-built first nuclear plant, as it remains defiant about sanctions imposed by world powers over its controversial atomic programme.After decades of delay, engineers will finally transfer the

SRINAGAR: The Indian military said Friday 23 soldiers had died in flash floods that struck a mountainous region in the north of the country a fortnight ago. "The army has lost 23 soldiers, including three JCOs (junior commissioned officers) in the flash-floods," Indian military spokesman

KABUL: A US soldier and an Afghan woman were killed in separate attacks in Afghanistan, NATO said Friday, amid a surge in Taliban violence and counter-insurgency operations across the country. The soldier was operating under NATO`s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and died