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Tokyo's Nikkei average fell below a two-decade closing low in mid-morning on Thursday, led down by Mizuho Holdings Inc and other banks following a dive on Wall Street and with the dollar near a six-month low on the yen.

As thick black smoke billowed out of subway ventilator shafts in Daegu, firefighters wearing oxygen tanks and orange suits rushed underground to search for survivors.

With the body count in Thailand's bloody crackdown on drugs nearing 1,000, a leading U.N. human rights official has added her voice to concerns over the escalating death toll.

Authorities will bury 140 bags of unidentified human remains from victims of the Bali bombings in a ceremony next week, government officials on the Indonesian island said Thursday.

The U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency says it is unable to verify what is happening at North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear complex, but it deplores the facility being operated without safeguards.

U.N. Security Council members have indicated there is not likely to be a rush to action on the issue of North Korea's nuclear program.

U.S. officials said Friday that activity has been detected at North Korea's reprocessing facility in Yongbyon that could lead to spent plutonium being reprocessed to produce five to eight nuclear weapons in addition to the one or two U.S. intelligence estimates the nation might already have.

U.S. forces bombed caves in southern Afghanistan where suspected enemy fighters reportedly took refuge after firing on American troops, the U.S. military said Thursday.

The United States is negotiating details of a major new counter-terror operation against Muslim rebels in the Philippines that could include involvement of U.S. special forces in combat.

Amid U.S.-Chinese diplomatic tensions over differences toward North Korea and Iraq, an American envoy praised China on Wednesday for its role in fighting terrorism.

The United States and Russia this weekend issued statements urging a diplomacy-driven and peaceful resolution to the nuclear weapons crisis gripping the Korean Peninsula.

The United States says it is prepared to hold face-to-face meetings with North Korea over the latter's nuclear program but no timeframe has been set for any talks.

The U.S. military says it will conduct two joint military exercises with South Korea next month, but added the annual maneuvers are not related to the nuclear dispute with North Korea.

A U.S. soldier accused of sexually assaulting a South Korean soldier is on trial in a U.S. military court.

The Bush administration plans to urge the U.N. Security Council to adopt a statement condemning North Korea's decision to reactivate its nuclear program but delaying any consideration of sanctions against Pyongyang, officials said Wednesday.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has led current and former politicians in paying tribute to Kalpana Chawla, the Indian-born astronaut who died along with six other crewmembers in the Columbia space shuttle tragedy.

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has hit out at international double standards that he said allowed associates of Osama bin Laden to be dubbed freedom fighters in one country and terrorists in another.

More than 150 defendants, including several senior officials and an alleged gangland kingpin, have appeared in court at the start of Vietnam's largest ever corruption trial.

A gunbattle, kidnappings, ballot stealing and the destruction of voting machines marred polling Wednesday in some Indian states where new legislatures were being elected.

In the past month, U.S. spy satellites have detected smoke rising from the once shuttered buildings clustered around a loop of North Korea's Kuryong River.