Bombs ripped through apartment buildings and a market in mostly Shiite areas of Baghdad on April 6, killing 50 people in post-election bloodshed that threatens to rekindle sectarian warfare that nearly destroyed the country three years ago.

A powerful 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Indonesia's Sumatra island on early April 7, sparking widespread panic and tsunami warnings but causing no major damage.

The heaviest rains in decades in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro set off landslides and floods on April 6, killing at least 95 people and leaving hundreds homeless.

A terrorist attack near the US Consulate in Peshawar, Pakistan, killed two consulate security guards and at least six others on April 5, authorities said.

More than a week after their coal mine in northern China was flooded by a rush of underground water, 115 miners were pulled out alive on Apil 5, China's state-run TV (CCTV) reported.

Seven miners died and 19 were missing after an explosion and collapse on April 5 at a West Virginia coal mine, the mine's owner Massey Energy said.

At least 25 people were killed when a suicide bomber attacked a political rally of the regional ruling party in Pakistan's northwest on April 5, police and doctors said.

Somali pirates on April 4 seized a supertanker carrying as much as $170 million worth of crude oil from Iraq to the United States off the east African coast, officials said.

A major 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck near the Mexico-California border on April 4, killing at least one person and panicking residents from Tijuana to Los Angeles.

A Chinese ship has been aground off north-eastern Australia, while carrying 950 tonnes of oil from the Australian port of Gladstone to China, sparking an alert of an oil leak into the Great Barrier Reef.