A huge fire that erupted as Sandy ripped through New York City with near-hurricane force winds on Monday night destroyed dozens of homes in one of the city's most remote neighborhoods, officials said.

Post-Tropical Cyclone Sandy, a former hurricane, had made landfall along the coast of southern New Jersey state as of 8 p.m. EDT on Monday (0100 GMT Tuesday), said the U.S. National Hurricane Center.

A small French start-up company is selling a technology with a hint of alchemy: turning water into gold.

The annual conference of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Tokyo, Japan, is expected to find solutions to the crisis in the Eurozone, check the downturn of the global economy and assist developing countries.

The operator of Japan's quake-struck Fukushima nuclear power plant said on Friday it could not rule out the possibility that it may still be leaking radiation into the sea.

Hurricane Sandy pounded the Bahamas with battering winds and rain on Friday, sweeping over the island chain after killing 21 people across the Caribbean and posing a menacing threat to the U.S. East Coast.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda on Wednesday named a new justice minister after the last one resigned in the wake of an uproar over past links to organised crime.

Japan's justice minister quit on Tuesday due to ill health, and amid calls for his resignation over past ties to an organized crime syndicate, dealing another blow to unpopular Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda.

The Philippine government said Thursday it has approved the export of 25 show dolphins to Singapore after a ban on their transport to a giant casino chain was lifted.

Taliban insurgents said on Tuesday that the Pakistani schoolgirl its gunmen shot in the head deserved to die because she had spoken out against the group and praised U.S. President Barack Obama.

U.S. President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney disagreed over the economy in their second debate on Tuesday, with Obama under heavy pressure to turn in a sharp and energetic performance three weeks before polling day.

Cambodia's former king Norodom Sihanouk, a revered figure in his home country who had suffered from a number of ailments in recent years, died in Beijing on Monday, Chinese state media said. He was 89.

The European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize for its long-term role in uniting the continent, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said on Friday, an award seen as morale boost for the bloc as it struggles to resolve its debt crisis.

enezuela's President Hugo Chavez named former bus driver and current Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro as his new vice president on Wednesday in the first cabinet change since his re-election on Sunday.