Japan's fragile post-disaster political truce unraveled on April 14 as the head of the main opposition party called on unpopular Prime Minister Naoto Kan to quit over his handling of the country's natural calamities and a nuclear crisis.

Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, has announced the formation of a new government, the Syrian Arab News Agency reported on April 15.

US, British and French leaders have said in a joint letter there can be no peace in Libya while Muammar Gaddafi stays in power.

Leaders of the five fast-growing emerging economies vowed to support the reform and improvement in international monetary system for the establishment of a stable, reliable and broad-based international reserve currency system.

Japanese police have begun searching for victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami within a 10km zone around the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant.

There is no military solution to the Libyan conflicts and NATO hopes to see a political one in the near future, the alliance's head, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said just ahead of the foreign ministers' gathering on Thursday.

The newly formed international "contact group" on Libya has called for Muammar Gaddafi to stand down as leader.

Five people were killed in clashes between rival forces in the Yemeni capital Sanaa as nationwide protests against the government continued on April 13.

The president of Tokyo Electric Power Company, the business at the heart of Japan's nuclear crisis, apologized again Wednesday, a day after the situation there was designated a Chernobyl-level nuclear accident.

US President Barack Obama unveiled his long-awaited deficit reduction plan Wednesday, calling for a mix of spending reductions and tax hikes that the White House claims would cut federal deficits by US$4 trillion over the next 12 years without gutting popular programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.