REUTERS, ISLAMABAD  - Pakistan successfully tested a nuclear-capable, air-launched cruise missile with a range of 350 km on Thursday, the military said, a day after India tested a long-range missile.

The Hatf-VIII (Ra'ad) missile had been developed exclusively for launch from aircraft, a military statement said.

REUTERS, ISLAMABAD - Leaders of Pakistan's ruling coalition are due to meet in London this week to resolve differences over how to reinstate judges dismissed in November by President Pervez Musharraf, officials said on Thursday.

A European team will arrive in Dhaka in June to recommend whether the EU should send observers to Bangladesh for the upcoming ninth parliamentary elections, reports bdnews4.com.

The first United Nations relief flights started to arrive on Thursday for cyclone victims in military-ruled Myanmar as a U.S. diplomat said that more than 100,000 people may have been killed, reports Reuters.

The cyclone slammed into coastal towns and villages in the rice-growing Irrawaddy delta southwest of Yangon on Saturday, the most devastating storm to hit Asia since 1991, when 143,000 people were killed in neighboring Bangladesh.

REUTERS, YANGON  - The United States is still waiting for approval from Myanmar to start military aid flights for survivors of Cyclone Nargis, its ambassador to Bangkok said on Thursday.

"This morning, we and our Thai allies thought we had a decision from the Burmese leadership to let the C-130 in. As of now, we don't have that decision," U.S. ambassador Eric John told a news conference in the Thai capital.

Vladimir Putin will retain a "key role" in Russia for years as prime minister, new President Dmitry Medvedev said Thursday, as the two men opened an unprecedented era of dual rule, report agencies.

Putin was confirmed as prime minister by 392 of the 448 deputies at an extraordinary session of the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, one day after Medvedev was inaugurated at a lavish Kremlin ceremony.

REUTERS, WASHINGTON - Russia has ordered the expulsion of two U.S. military attaches from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, said the State Department on Thursday.

"They have been asked to leave.

REUTERS, KHOST, Afghanistan - The announcement over the military address system echoed ominously across the U.S. base in southeastern Afghanistan, freezing soldiers in their tracks.

REUTERS, LONDON  - British police charged four men on Thursday with conspiring to support the Sri Lankan rebel group the Tamil Tigers.

Arunachalam Chrishanthakumar, 51, Jegatheswaran Muraleetharan, 46, Jeyatheswaran Vythyatharan, 39, and Murugesu Jegatheeswaran, 33, will all appear at Westminster Magistrates Court later on Thursday.

REUTERS, VIENNA  - Austrian Josef Fritzl said he became addicted to incest with his daughter, who bore him seven children, and had imprisoned her in a cellar to save her from the outside world.

In comments related by his lawyer to weekly magazine News, Fritzl, who locked up Elisabeth in 1984 when she was 18, said he started raping his daughter a year later.

REUTERS, JOHANNESBURG - A Reuters photographer covering the aftermath of Zimbabwe's elections has been detained for three days for allegedly using a satellite phone to transmit pictures, the global news and information company said on Thursday.

Reuters called for the immediate release of Howard Burditt, a Zimbabwean national, who has been held by police in Harare since Monday. He has not been charged.

Russia may further increase troop numbers in the Georgian breakaway region of Abkhazia if Tbilisi builds up its forces near the conflict zone, the Russian defense ministry said on Thursday, reports Reuters.

A Georgian government minister said this week Abkhazia was "very close" to war following Russia's announcement it was sending in hundreds of extra peacekeeping troops to counter what it called Tbilisi's plans for an attack.

Iran has arrested members of a terrorist group with links to Britain and the United States who were behind a blast at a mosque last month that killed 14 and wounded 200 in the southern city of Shiraz, a news agency said, reports Reuters.

Iranian officials had previously said the April 12 blast, in the Shohada mosque during an evening prayer sermon by a prominent local cleric, was caused by explosives left over from an exhibition commemorating the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

Burundi's army said on Thursday it had killed 50 fighters from the country's last active guerrilla group in clashes outside the capital Bujumbura, reports Reuters.

"The Forces for National Liberation (FNL) ambushed our troops on patrol, the army then entered into heavy battle with the insurgents ... two soldiers were also killed," army spokesman Colonel Adolphe Manirakiza said.

A team led by the U.S. State Department's nuclear envoy was set to enter North Korea on Thursday to persuade Pyongyang to declare its nuclear activities as called for in a six-nation disarmament deal, an official said, reports Reuters.

U.S. envoy Sung Kim led a similar delegation to the secretive state about two weeks ago, pressing for an inventory of its fissile material and nuclear weaponry and for answers to U.S. charges that it enriched uranium for weapons and transferred technology to Syria.

REUTERS, BANGKOK - Myanmar's junta knows it needs outside help in the face of an "unprecedented emergency" after Cyclone Nargis, but it must act now to remove red tape delaying a massive international aid operation, a U.N. official said on Wednesday.

With large swathes of the Irrawaddy delta under water and up to one million people in need of shelter, water, medicine and food, the disaster presents a "major logistical challenge",

REUTERS, Yangon - Military helicopters dropped food and drinking water to the cyclone-stricken people of Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta, where entire villages have been virtually washed away, officials said on Wednesday.

The military government said nearly 22,500 people were killed and 41,000 missing in the most devastating cyclone in Asia since 1991 when a storm killed 143,000 in neighboring Bangladesh.

Londontimes Barack Obama took a potentially decisive step towards the Democratic nomination today after scoring a big victory in North Carolina and forcing the Indiana election down to the wire.

Mr Obama's big win in the Tar Heel state robbed Mrs Clinton of the "game changing" victory she badly needed to alter the course of the Democratic nomination battle, while the closeness of the race in Indiana added to the sense that she is rapidly running out of time to wrench the nomination from her rival's grasp.

REUTERS, Moscow - Dmitry Medvedev was sworn in as president in a solemn ceremony in the Kremlin's throne room on Wednesday, ushering in an unprecedented period of dual rule with his predecessor Vladimir Putin, who becomes prime minister.

Medvedev, a 42-year-old former corporate lawyer and longtime Putin ally, placed his hand on a red, leather-bound copy of the Russian constitution to take the oath of office before 2,000 invited guests.

REUTERS, Tokyo - The leaders of Japan and China vowed on Wednesday to deepen trust and cooperate on issues from climate change to regional security, and said they were on track to resolve a feud over energy rights in the East China Sea.

Friction over history, undersea gas reserves, military plans, international influence and consumer safety has divided the neighbors, and mutual public distrust runs deep.