ASEAN will make a greater effort to promote cooperation with its partners to reinforce the bloc’s central role in regional cooperation and improve its position in the international community, said ASEAN foreign ministers in meetings with their counterparts in Hanoi on July 22.

Forty specialized vessels and about 800 fishing boats are rushing to mop up a major oil slick off China’s northeast coast before Saturday, in a bid to prevent the contamination of international waters, local officials said Tuesday.

Mystery shrouded the collision of two passenger trains, Uttarbanga Express and Vananchal Express, early Monday morning at the Sainthia station in Birbhum district in the western Indian state of West Bengal, which saw at least 63 killed and over 150 others injured.

Aircraft manufacturers awaited more orders Tuesday at the Farnborough Airshow, a day after it took off with rivals Boeing and Airbus netting 23 billion dollars in new contracts.

Some of the world's most developed nations were expected Tuesday to announce initiatives to cooperate on clean energy after a top policy board warned that the world's current path on power was unsustainable.

 Angela MerkelGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel, wrapping up an Asian tour, ran into fresh turmoil at home on Sunday when yet another key ally, Hamburg mayor Ole von Beust, announced he was resigning. The embattled Merkel was in Kazakhstan on Sunday after a trip to China and analysts said her return home would be soured by the unwelcome news from the northern port city, which is also one of Germany's 16 regional states. Von Beust, a Christian Democrat (CDU) who has governed Hamburg for nearly nine years, told reporters that he would step down on August 25, citing personal reasons. Six CDU state leaders have left their posts in the last 10 months for various reasons, which the Welt am Sonntag newspaper said showed that the ranks of experienced leaders in Merkel's party was fast dwindling. "It would not be entirely fair to give the chancellor all the blame for these departures, but at the same time she has to ask herself whether she has done enough for the top players on her team," it said. "The answer is no." The online service of news weekly Der Spiegel called von Beust's exit a "strong blow" for the 56-year-old Merkel. She won a second term in last September's elections with her coalition partner of choice, the pro-business Free Democrats, but her government has suffered a free fall in opinion polls since then due to incessant infighting. The chancellor, called the world's most powerful women by Forbes magazine four years running, has proved unable to corral her ministers, who have been squabbling over issues ranging from tax policy to healthcare reform. Merkel's biographer Gerd Langguth said that the mass exodus of state leaders and the shock resignation of then president Horst Koehler in May highlighted her party's weaknesses, and exacerbated its problems. "The ranks are thinning out - von Beust is of course replaceable but it will take time for others to develop their own profile," Langguth said. He said the unpopularity of Merkel's government has made life more difficult for conservative politicians throughout the country. "Part of the problem is frustration with politics in general." Von Beust, 55, is a political moderate who became the first conservative state premier to openly acknowledge his homosexuality. He has led the city-state since 2001 after a bitterly fought election days after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, which were planned and carried out in part by an Al-Qaeda cell based in Hamburg. In a traditionally leftist city, von Beust courted the urban constituency and was successful in winning new voters for the conservative camp. In 2008 he formed with Merkel's approval the country's first alliance between the CDU and the ecologist Greens party - an intriguing tie-up that analysts say could serve as a model one day on the national level. But Hamburg, the richest city in Germany and its second most populous, has run into trouble with its public finances of late - most recently seen in the runaway costs of a spectacular symphony hall whose construction is under way. Media reports said von Beust aimed to abandon the stress of political life in favour of more time on the posh North Sea holiday island Sylt. AFP/de

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni (C) poses for photos with delegates attending the opening ceremony of the first African Union Youth Forum at the Imperial Botanical Beach Hotel in Entebbe, 40 km south of Kampala, Uganda, on July 17, 2010.

Two express passenger trains collided in eastern India in the early hours of Monday morning, killing at least 50 people, television reports said.

The foreign affairs chief for the European Union said on July 17 the alliance is committed to a Palestinian statehood and to improving the situation in Gaza.

Flames that engulfed a port in Dalian, a coastal city in northeast China's Liaoning Province, were basically extinguished in the morning on July 17, 15 hours after blasts hit two oil pipelines.

 View of the fire-damaged Soma Hotel in the Iraqi northern city of Sulaimaniyah July 16, 2010.  (Xinhua/AFP Photo)An officer from local police forces has lowered the death toll from a fire at a hotel Friday in Iraq's northern Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah back to 29, adding 21 others were also wounded.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard called an election Saturday for August 21 to resolve an ongoing battle over policies on economic management, climate and border protection.

At least 20 people are said to have been killed in a pair of explosions in the southeastern Iranian city of Zahedan, Iran's state news agency IRNA reported on July 15.

Heavy rains and powerful winds have battered Asia. Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes. While many have seen their power supplies cut off.

Indian and Pakistani Foreign Ministers have concluded their much awaited daylong talks in Islamabad without announcing any tangible steps to build the trust shattered by the Mumbai terrorist attacks.