Four Japanese climbers in their 50s and 60s are missing after they were hit by an avalanche on Mount McKinley in the United States, a tour organiser said on Sunday.

The third and fourth reactor buildings of the Oi nuclear power plant in Fukui prefecture, western Japan. A controversial decision to restart two nuclear reactors in western Japan has moved a step closer after the mayor of a local town gave his approval to the plan, according to local media reports. (AFP/Jiji Press - Jiji Press)

Thousands of displaced Muslim Rohingyas and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists were in need of food, water and shelter in northwestern Myanmar on Thursday after fleeing the country's worst sectarian clashes in years.

New claims for US unemployment benefits rose last week, building on a worrying upward trend in the pace of layoffs, the government said Thursday.

Searchers have recovered the bodies of 11 Haitians who died in the sinking of a small, overcrowded boat off the Bahamas, and 12 others are missing, according to US and Bahamian authorities.

A tweet by France's first lady in support of an election rival of President Francois Hollande's ex-partner has triggered a politically damaging media firestorm just days from a decisive round of parliamentary elections.

Northwest Myanmar was tense on Monday after sectarian violence engulfed its largest city at the weekend, with Reuters witnessing rival mobs of Muslims and Buddhists torching houses and police firing into the air to disperse crowds.

United Nations leader Ban Ki-moon on Monday demanded UN access to the Syrian city of Al-Heffa, as regime helicopters fired on rebel stronghold towns, leaving more than 100 people dead.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics said on Wednesday that the economy grew 1.3 per cent in the January to March quarter compared to the previous quarter, which was double what economists had expected.

When al Qaeda leader Abu Yahya al-Libi arrived in northwest Pakistan several years ago, he commanded so much respect that even some of the world's most dangerous militants held him in awe.

U.N. observers who on Friday visited the site of a reported massacre in a Syrian village saw indications that government forces had been there and traces of slaughter in some of the houses, the United Nations said.

Eight civilians died in southwestern Ivory Coast in the attack that killed seven UN peacekeepers, the United Nations said on Saturday.

Around 30 prisoners managed to escape an Afghan prison after Taliban gunmen attacked the jail, sparking clashes that left three inmates dead and 28 wounded, officials said Friday.

China will launch a spacecraft this month to conduct its first manned space docking, state media said Saturday, the latest step in a plan aimed at giving the country a permanent space station by 2020.