After months of sharp differences, Russia and the United States have agreed to push both sides in Syria to find an end to the bloodshed, offering to hold an international conference in search of peace.

Five members of the US-led international military coalition were killed on Saturday by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan, the latest deadly attack against foreign troops since the Taliban announced the start of their spring offensive this week.

Nine people were arrested today after a group of Maoist cadres and locals clashed with the police and set ablaze a tourist fee counter here over the issue of increased entry fee at Hanuman Dhoka Durbar Square, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

An election candidate escaped unharmed Wednesday in a suicide bombing in southern Pakistan which left two people wounded, police said, after the latest in a wave of attacks to hit the campaign.

Indian national Sarabjit Singh, severely injured in a brutal assault last week, has slipped into a “non-reversible” coma and doctors in a hospital here are struggling to save his life, official sources said today.

In a severe jolt to former Pakistan military ruler Pervez Musharraf’s plans to stage a political comeback, a court today banned him from contesting elections for the rest of his life for abrogating constitution twice and detaining judges during the emergency in 2007.

Pakistan’s former military ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf will spend the election day under house arrest with an anti-terrorism court today sending him to judicial custody for a fortnight in the Benazir Bhutto assassination case in 2007.

Doctors treating Indian death row convict Sarbajit Singh, comatose in a hospital here in Pakistan after a brutal assault, today said his condition has deteriorated though he had not been declared brain dead.

Pakistani officials today dismissed a report that a medical board was considering a proposal to send abroad Indian death row convict Sarabjit Singh - comatose in a Lahore hospital after a brutal assault - for treatment.

Two bomb blasts outside campaign offices of candidates contesting Pakistan’s general election killed nine persons and injured more than 30 in northwest Pakistan today.