FREE RIDE: Nearly 200 pilgrims traveling to a religious fair for free were packed onto a 10-wheeled truck that crashed into a 25m ravine on a winding mountain road
Rescuers in India recovered the bodies of 85 people yesterday from the mangled wreckage of a truck that plunged into a ravine in one of the country's worst accidents in recent years, police said.

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Pakistan's government urged exiled former prime minister Nawaz Sharif not to return home, saying yesterday he should honor a promise he made to stay away after being ousted from power.

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A car bomb exploded in the parking lot of a military-owned bank in northwestern Pakistan yesterday, wounding 17 people, police said.

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EXPLICIT COMMITMENT: Human Rights Watch says the Chinese government is not making good on its promises to afford journalists greater media freedom
Chinese officials are flouting a pledge made to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which helped to secure the 2008 games for Beijing, by harassing and abusing journalists, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Friday.

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ANOTHER BLOW: Minister Hiroya Masuda admitted to receiving a US$8,700 campaign donation in 2003 but not registering it on the appropriate form
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's new Cabinet took another blow yesterday as a minister in charge of political funding admitted that he had in the past mishandled a political donation.

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Authorities hunted for 13 mine-clearing workers on Friday who were kidnapped in an insurgency-wracked Afghan province less than a week after Taliban militants vowed to step up an abduction campaign.

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ACCIDENTAL DEATH?: Relatives of the UK couple said Portuguese police believed Kate McCann killed Madeleine by accident, a charge which Gerry McCann called `ludicrous'
The parents of British toddler Madeleine McCann placed themselves firmly in the media spotlight in a bid to find the missing girl, but now face attention of a less welcome kind after being named as suspects.

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Polish lawmakers cleared the way on Friday for an early election on Oct. 21, expected to be a close race between the nationalist, conservative governing party and a more business-friendly center-right rival.

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Sierra Leoneans went to the polls yesterday in what was expected to be a close presidential election runoff in the west African country, which emerged from a brutal civil war only six years ago.

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Throngs of admirers of Luciano Pavarotti, the big, booming tenor who starred in hallowed opera houses and alongside pop stars, had a last chance to pay respect to him before an invitation-only funeral yesterday in his hometown's cathedral.

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`SENSE OF VICTORY': The ruling allows nearly 1,000 family members and a handful of survivors to try to collect Iranian assets from various sources around the world
Iran must pay US$2.65 billion to the families of the 241 US service members killed in the 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut, a federal judge declared in a ruling that left survivors and families shedding tears of joy.

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FRAUD CHARGE: Malcolm Webber, or Grand Chief Thunderbird IV, allegedly sold Kaweah tribe memberships to aliens and claimed the papers granted US citizenship
The leader of an unrecognized US Indian tribe was charged on Friday in an alleged scheme to sell memberships to immigrants by falsely claiming the documents conferred US citizenship, a federal prosecutor said.

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The owners of a nursing home where 35 patients died in Hurricane Katrina's flood waters were acquitted of negligent homicide and cruelty charges for not evacuating the facility as the storm approached.

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The US medical establishment seems to have turned a blind eye to the abuse of military medicine at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba, doctors from around the world said in a letter published in a prestigious British medical journal.

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Museum-goers gasped on Thursday at the well-preserved mummy of an Incan teenage girl, which is on display for the first time, a serene gaze etched on her face hundreds of years ago when she froze to death in the Andes.

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