Violence in Baghdad and central Iraq on Monday killed 12 people, including eight soldiers struck by a car bomb driven by a suicide attacker in Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, officials said.

Yemeni dissidents on Monday called for a swift power transfer as the opposition vowed to block the return President Ali Abdullah Saleh whose party insists he will be back after surgery in Saudi Arabia.

Kidnapped Colombian journalist Mario Esteban Lopez escaped being burned alive by kidnappers because the gasoline they doused him with wetted their matches, he told EFE.

The chancellor of the University of Oxford, Lord Chris Patten, wants India’s Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia to be the next managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

India’s stand-in cricket captain Suresh Raina has rubbished reports linking him to an alleged bookmaker, saying getting photographed with somebody does not amount to knowing the person.

State Bank of India (SBI) is set to commence operations in Saudi Arabia in the next four to six weeks, a senior bank official has said.

Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Mujawar and three other senior Yemeni officials wounded in shelling of the presidential compound were transferred to Saudi Arabia for treatment on Saturday, a medic said.

Bombers killed 24 people in attacks on a mosque in central Iraq frequented by provincial officials and later at a hospital where the victims were being treated, officials said on Saturday.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak said he was optimistic that Asean will continue to develop meaningful and constructive relations with both China and India.

Fighting broke out in the Yemeni capital on Saturday as embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh vowed to hit back after he was wounded in shelling of his compound.