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SYDNEY, Australia (CNN) – An Australian company stunned its staff by sharing annual profits with its workforce in a one-off bonus payment to every employee.

November 9, 1994: The People's Alliance (PA), headed by the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), wins the general election. Its leader, Kumaratunga, is elected president later in the year.

The man convicted of masterminding the plan to kill Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl has been sentenced to die, and three others received life sentences Monday from a Pakistan court.

Prosecutors in Pakistan said Wednesday they would seek the death penalty for four men accused of kidnapping and killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. The judge has retired to consider a verdict in the case.

A defense lawyer in the 12-week trial for four Islamic radicals accused of kidnapping and killing journalist Daniel Pearl said Tuesday the evidence against his clients is weak.

A pair of fierce typhoons has wreaked havoc across the Pacific Ocean, leaving dozens feared dead in Micronesia and threatening to add to a worsening flood crisis in China.

The two Koreas are heading to the negotiating table in an apparent breakthrough after months of frozen relations between the bitter neighbours.

The Pacific typhoon season has begun with a vengeance this year with two major systems weaving a path of destruction across the region.

Despite New Delhi's insistence that third-party mediation in Kashmir was unwanted, the British defence and foreign affairs ministers are heading to India.

A British warship is being assessed for damage after hitting a rock off the coast of Australia.

The United Nations denied Tuesday that it is investigating the July 1 U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan that Afghans say killed more than 50 civilians at a wedding party, claiming it has conducted a humanitarian fact-finding mission.

Pakistan's supreme court has upheld a requirement that candidates for parliament must hold a university degree.

A U.N. fact-finding team in Afghanistan is revising a preliminary report which, according to the Times of London, claimed the U.S. military removed evidence at the village where U.S. jets struck a wedding party on June 30.

Recent progress on human rights and the growth of democracy around the world should not become casualties of the global war against terror, a report from the United Nations has warned.

Beijing has hit back at the U.S., accusing the Pentagon and a congressional commission of fabricating a 'China threat' and warning that one of the biggest risks faced by China was continuing U.S. arm sales to Taiwan.

Between 40 and 50 U.S. specialists will train a new security force to protect Afghan President Hamid Karzai as concern over his safety mounts, according to an official from this Central Asian nation.

Military officials Friday were trying to determine whether an attack on a building housing U.S. Special Forces troops was in retaliation for the July 1 attack by U.S. aircraft on nearby villages that killed several civilians.

U.S. civil affairs and medical personnel were fired upon Tuesday as they were returning in a convoy of three SUVs from Kandahar to the air base outside the city.

North Korea has agreed to resume dialogue with the United States and a senior American envoy will travel to Pyongyang in the near future, the communist nation's foreign minister has said.

The Philippines and the United States have agreed to hold a second round of exercises after the current maneuvers with Filipino troops end this month.

U.S. officials believe a large group of guests at a wedding party in Afghanistan were standing near an anti-aircraft artillery site when a U.S. AC-130 gunship struck it from the air, killing dozens of civilians.

Three Southern Right whales took time out from their annual migration journey to take in the many sights of Sydney's Harbour and put on a spectacular show for local residents and workers.

Two young Asian asylum seekers are back in detention in Australia after being handed over to authorities by the British Consulate in Melbourne.