PAKISTAN

Yemen will stop issuing tourist visas on arrival to foreigners in an effort to prevent militants entering the country as it steps up its war on al Qaeda, a government official and state media said on Thursday.

Pakistan ruled out any new offensive against militants Thursday, even as U.S. defence chief Robert Gates began meetings aimed at persuading the country to expand its military campaign to take on Afghanistan's Taliban.

Arms negotiators failed to start talks on Tuesday on cutting nuclear weapons when Pakistan blocked the adoption of the 2010 agenda for the U.N.-sponsored Conference on Disarmament.

Three al Qaeda militants were captured in Yemen early on Saturday, close to the Saudi Arabian border, a Yemeni security official said.

Six al Qaeda militants were killed in an air strike in northern Yemen on Friday in a stepped-up campaign by the Yemeni government against the Islamist militant group.

Two people were killed and six wounded on Friday when separatist guerrillas threw grenades and opened fire at a police station in Indian Kashmir, police and witnesses said.

A U.S. drone fired two missiles on Thursday at a compound in northwest Pakistan where Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud was believed to have been, but his fate was not known, Pakistani officials said.

The Australian Government today has continued its fight against breast cancer with the announcement that Australian women at risk of breast cancer will be able to be screened by the latest technology as early as next week.

Pakistani society is likely to become more Islamist and increasingly anti-American in the coming years, complicating U.S. efforts to win its support against militant groups, a report released on Tuesday said.

A video of the CIA bomber in Afghanistan sitting beside the Pakistani Taliban leader created the impression that the group may have played a key role in the second biggest attack in agency history.

The suicide bomber who killed CIA agents in Afghanistan had made a video calling on militants to avenge the death of the Pakistani Taliban leader by carrying out attacks in and outside the United States, al Jazeera said.

U.S. senators on Friday defended American drone aircraft strikes in ally Pakistan, an issue likely to become more volatile if Washington intensifies the attacks to hunt down enemies after the bombing of CIA agents in Afghanistan.

A suicide bomber struck a crowded market in restive southeast Afghanistan on Thursday, killing nine people including a senior Afghan commander, while another blast hit a neighbouring province's governor's office.

Tens of thousands more Pakistanis are likely to be forced from their homes in 2010 as the military continues an assault against the Taliban, the head of the U.N. office responsible for emergencies said on Thursday.

France's interior minister wants to add 23 countries to a list of places whose air travelers face tighter security measures, in response to the botched bombing of a U.S.-bound airliner last month.

Global cotton production in 2010/11 is forecast at 24.2 million tons up nearly 10%, according to International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC). The production in China is forecsted at 7.7 mn tonnes in 2010/11, one million tons higher than in the current season. Most of the gain is expected to come from increased area in response to higher domestic prices.

A European Union warship rescued a Pakistan-flagged fishing vessel Somali pirates had seized last month and used to hijack another ship, EU naval force Navfor said in a statement.

A top White House official said on Sunday the plot to bomb a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day exposed errors but he played down the need for a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. security system.

Nigeria described on Monday as unfair its inclusion alongside Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen on a list of countries whose air travellers will face tighter screening on journeys to the United States.

A bomb attack in northwest Pakistan killed a former minister on Sunday, officials said, keeping up pressure on a government struggling to contain a raging Taliban insurgency and stabilise the country.

The number of Iraqi civilians killed in violence fell by half in 2009 to about 4,500 but improvements in security have slowed and large-scale attacks took a major toll last year, a study has found.