THE Government is not involved in the selection and hiring of coaches at National Sports Associations (NSAs).

That responsibility lies wholly in the hands of an NSA, said Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports Vivian Balakrishnan.

KABUL - AFGHANISTAN will hold a second round of its presidential election on Nov 7 after incumbent Hamid Karzai failed to win a clear majority in the fraud-tainted contest, officials said Tuesday.

Exactly two months on from polls that Mr Karzai had been expected to win easily, the Independent Election Commission (IEC) confirmed that he had fallen short of the 50 per cent needed to avoid a run-off against his main challenger Abdullah Abdullah.

ISLAMABAD - TWIN bomb blasts ripped through an Islamic university campus here on Tuesday, killing at least two people, as Pakistan's military pursued a major anti-Taleban offensive in the lawless north-west.

The bombing of Islamabad's Islamic International University was the seventh major militant attack in just over a fortnight and the first since the military launched what officials vowed would be a knockout blow against the Taleban.

SINGAPORE - MYANMAR has scuttled a plan by fellow Asean members to issue a public appeal seeking amnesty for detained pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, a diplomatic source said Tuesday.

'They rejected it two months ago. They rejected the idea,' the South-east Asian diplomat told AFP just days before the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) leaders hold their annual summit in Thailand this weekend.