MOSCOW - VISITING US President Barack Obama and Kremlin leader Dmitry Medvedev agreed a target for cuts in nuclear arms and a deal to let US troops fly across Russia at the start of a trip intended to mend strained ties.
At a joint news conference in the Kremlin's vast, gilded St Andrew's Hall, the two leaders spoke of their resolve to put differences behind them and focus on cooperating to solve global problems such as the spread of nuclear weapons.
URUMQI (China) - RIOTS and street battles killed at least 156 people in China's western Xinjiang province, state media said on Tuesday, and injured 828 others in the deadliest ethnic unrest to hit the region in decades. Officials said the death toll was expected to rise.
Police sealed off streets in parts of the provincial capital, Urumqi, after discord between ethnic Muslim Uighur people and China's Han majority erupted into violence. Witnesses reported a new, smaller protest on Monday in a second city, Kashgar.
WASHINGTON - ROBERT McNamara, the US secretary of defence whose broad career as an industry leader and a global financial aid revolutionary was overshadowed by his role as key architect of the Vietnam war, died on Monday aged 93, The Washington Post reported.
From 1961 to 1968, McNamara oversaw the escalation of US combat efforts in the highly divisive Vietnam war that became known as one of the biggest military blunders in US history - and a war McNamara himself came to describe as 'terribly wrong.'
NEW YORK - OIL prices tumbled to five-week lows on Monday on growing evidence of an extended recession that could mean demand for energy will remain weak for some time.
Benchmark crude for August delivery fell US$2.67 - or 4 per cent - to US$64.05 (S$96) a barrel in afternoon trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
