News in English

The leader of the US-backed Iraqi congress yesterday said the country's security situation would not be stable for 12 to 18 months and Australia should maintain a military presence there for that long.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il plans to meet with Chinese President Hu Jintao for the first time in a trip he will make to China within a month, possibly as early as next week, a Japanese newspaper reported Saturday.

The governing African National Congress on Friday celebrated its victory in a decade of multiracial democracy, while the party that gave South Africa apartheid headed toward political obscurity.

Authorities announced an embarrassing discovery Friday as Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo arrived to discuss anti-drug strategies: a large stash of cocaine and heroin on the flagship naval vessel he is to visit.

With former Islamic warlords cutting their beards and trading combat fatigues for business suits, a one-time battleground in Central Asia is being transformed into an oasis of relative stability.

Australia's military presence in Iraq is essential, Deputy US Secretary of State Richard Armitage has said in the wake of the Opposition's pledge to pull troops out by Christmas if it wins the election.

US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair vowed today to stand firm in the face of a deadly Iraqi insurgency - just hours before a new hostage video showed a US soldier held by gunmen.

President George W. Bush broke with a decades-old US policy yesterday by stating Israel could keep some land captured in the 1967 war, infuriating Palestinian leaders who condemned the US leader.

Fabrizio Quattrocchi, 35, from Genoa, was killed with a shot to the back of the neck, according to the Arabic TV channel that received video footage of the outrage.

NAURU, the world's smallest republic, was on the verge of a default that would result in a major US financier seizing the once rich Pacific nation's last assets, diplomatic sources said yesterday.