Shortly before the United States ended a two-month pause in missile strikes on militants in Pakistan last month, senior U.S. officials telephoned their Pakistani counterparts and told them Washington would be resuming its covert drone program despite mounting objections in Islamabad.Vice President Joe Biden…

Wildfires, peat fires and controlled burns on farming lands kill 339,000 people worldwide each year, said a study released on Saturday that is the first to estimate a death toll for landscape fires.Most of those deaths are concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa, where an estimated…

Japan on Monday began a process that will see another one of the country's nuclear reactors go offline, leaving just two of 54 in operation.Kansai Electric Power Co (KEPCO), the largest utility firm after Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), began lowering power generation in…

Measured by environmental impact, a humble shrimp cocktail could be the most costly part of a typical restaurant meal, scientists said Friday.If the seafood is produced on a typical Asian fish farm, a 100-gram (3.5 ounce) serving "has an ecosystem carbon footprint of an…

Thirty-year-old Krysztof Radzikowski of Poland stood out from 24 other contenders to become the 2012 World's Strongest Man in a three-day competition of strength and power.He scored 35 points to win the title and the top prize of $6,000 (Dh22,000).The competition began on…

A fire gutted an overcrowded jail in Honduras, killing more than 350 people, officials said Wednesday, as rescue teams found the charred bodies of inmates trapped in their cells by the blaze.Survivors described wrenching scenes of prisoners pleading for help as they were engulfed…

A foreigner was seriously wounded when a device he was suspected of carrying exploded in the Thai capital Bangkok on Tuesday, police said.Police investigators rushed to the scene after three men were seen fleeing from a house where a blast was reported in the…

China's defence budget will double between 2011 and 2015 and outstrip the combined spending of all other key defence markets in the Asia-Pacific region, global research group IHS said Tuesday.China's defence budget stood at $119.8 billion last year and will rise to $238.2 billion…

A probe designed to delve into the "Big Bang" that created the cosmos has uncovered an enigmatic fog of microwave radiation in the centre of our galaxy, European astronomers reported on Monday.Planck, a billion-dollar European space telescope launched in May 2009, found "a mysterious…

A British scientist arrived in Karachi on Friday to examine and record the details of the 11-metre long whale shark that was towed by local fishermen to the Karachi Fish Harbour from the open sea earlier this week.He is being accompanied by a documentary…