At least 25 Afghan passengers were killed and 20 wounded when their bus was hit by a roadside bomb in western Afghanistan on July 28.

A passenger jet crashed into the hills surrounding Pakistan's capital amid rain on July 28, killing all 152 people onboard, and blazing a path of devastation strewn with body parts and twisted metal wreckages.

Twenty-one people are missing feared dead after heavy rain triggered a landslide which flattened part of a village in Sichuan, southern China.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said on Tuesday his dream of a United States of Africa was still alive and this week's African Union summit was another step toward that objective.

Battered BP began reinventing itself in the shadow of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill Tuesday, naming its first American CEO as it reported a record US$17 billion quarterly loss.

In an historic first, a United Nations-backed court on July 27 sentenced a Khmer Rouge prison chief to 30 years in jail for crimes against humanity over mass executions during Cambodia's "Killing Fields" era.

The 36th Annual Gathering and the 9th General Assembly of the Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (AIBD) opened in Macao (China) on July 26, bringing together more than 70 radio and TV broadcasters from 22 countries in the region.

The European Union and Canada have slapped tough sanctions on Iran's key energy sector in a bid to block its contested nuclear programme, and the United States said the punitive steps would bite.

At least 45 civilians, many women and children, died in a rocket attack by the NATO-led foreign force in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province last week, a spokesman for the Afghan government said on July 26.

Two car bombs targeting Shiite pilgrims during a religious festival in the holy city of Karbala killed 25 people on July 26, Iraqi police and hospital officials said, with Sunni extremists being suspected.