Seven people were killed and 10 others were injured on May 27 in two lightning strikes in Bangladesh's Delduar sub-district of Tangail district, 92 km northwest of the capital Dhaka.

ASEAN Secretary General, Surin Pitsuwan, has called on Asian countries to jointly nominate a candidate for the post of managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

At least 50 persons were killed, when a passenger bus plunged into the Neelum River in Pakistan on May 27.

Former military chief Ratko Mladic appeared in court, hours after his arrest in Serbia ended a 16-year manhunt for the general accused of masterminding the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

A gun battle between rival drug gangs in western Mexico left 29 bodies in fake military uniforms heaped across a roadway and inside bullet-riddled vehicles in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit, the army said Thursday.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton began an awkward, unsmiling meeting with Pakistan's leaders on Friday as Washington pressed its ally to fully grasp the need to quash Islamist militancy amid tense ties over the killing of Osama bin Laden.

G8 leaders promised on Friday to financially support new Arab democracies, according to a statement they are to release from a meeting in the northern French resort town of Deauville.

Israel's navy is casting its net wider and deeper in an effort to stop Gaza militants from receiving weapons by sea, a difficult mission made harder, Israel says, by political turmoil in Egypt and the Egyptian decision to fully reopen its border crossing with Gaza.

World leaders are in the French resort of Deauville for a summit of the G8 bloc of wealthy nations.

Eight US troops were killed by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan on Thursday in the deadliest single attack on foreign forces in a month, the US military said.