National News

By Nick Mulvenney
EVEREST BASE CAMP, China (Reuters) - The Olympic flame reached the top of Mount Everest on Thursday, an emotional moment for China and the crowning of the Beijing Olympics torch relay that was dogged by anti-Chinese protests on its world tour.

By James Topham
TOKYO (Reuters) - Oil futures were steady over $123 a barrel on Thursday, pulling back from a record high as the dollar's rise to a two-month high against the euro offset news of falling U.S. diesel stockpiles.

BEIJING (Reuters) - The Olympic flame reached the top of Mount Everest on Thursday after days of weather-related delays, live TV showed.

By Aung Hla Tun
YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar's military government came under pressure on Wednesday to open its borders to more international help after a devastating cyclone that a U.S. diplomat said may have killed more than 100,000 people.

Hillary Clinton swept critical showdowns with Barack Obama in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday to keep her Democratic presidential bid alive, and John McCain clinched the Republican nomination and looked ahead to the November election.

Hillary Clinton won a critical showdown with Barack Obama in Ohio on Tuesday to breathe new life into her campaign and extend the Democratic presidential race, while John McCain clinched the Republican nomination and looked ahead to the November election.

The world's cheapest car may be coming to India soon, but at a price.
For years, Asha Patra and her husband tilled their land in West Bengal for a meagre but stable living. Then the communist state government walled it off for a factory to make the world's cheapest car, Tata Motor's Nano, dubbed India's "People's Car".

At least four people were killed in a series of blasts on Tuesday near a naval college in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, police said.

Kashmir Singh, who spent 35 years on death row in Pakistan on spying charges, returned home to his wife and two sons on Tuesday, after Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf accepted his mercy plea.

Ten people were killed when a helicopter carrying United Nations officials crashed in bad weather over hilly terrain near Nepal's capital on Monday, police and airport officials said.

India said on Monday it was still looking for political support at home for a controversial nuclear deal with the United States, even as Washington says time is running out.

Authorities in India are investigating whether a British girl could have been raped and killed in Goa last month after the victim's parents demanded a more thorough look at the case.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates' visit to Asia this week was aimed at deepening strategic ties with regional leaders and showing that Washington remained engaged, but China's explosive rise was never far from the surface.

A suicide bomber blew himself up among mourners at a police funeral, killing at least 38 people in northwest Pakistan on Friday, intelligence officials said.

Parents who teach "tough love" by disciplining their children with spankings could be making them more likely to have sexual problems as teenagers and adults, a leading researcher said.

A suicide attack on a funeral and a roadside bomb in northwest Pakistan killed at least 30 people on Friday, many of them police, officials said.

A suicide bomber killed at least 27 people at a funeral on Friday for a Pakistani policeman who had been killed earlier in the day, according to doctors and police in northwest Pakistan.

The death toll in a suicide attack on the funeral for a policeman in northwest Pakistan rose to at least 15 and many of the casualties were police, a senior officer said.

India raised its defence spending on Friday by 10 percent to $26.5 billion for 2008/09, but experts said a slow bureaucratic process could delay modernisation of the world's fourth largest military.