WORLD

Gunshots were fired in the centre of the Tunisian capital on Tuesday, people in the area said, in a new blow to faltering efforts to restore security after the overthrow of the autocratic president.

At least two floors of Ivory Coast's multi-storey Treasury building were in flames on Tuesday as emergency services attempted to douse the fire and crowds formed nearby, according to a Reuters witness.

Egyptians staged one of their biggest protests yet on Tuesday demanding President Hosni Mubarak step down now, their wrath undiminished by the vice president's announcement of a plan to transfer power.

The following declassified document includes a September 5, 2002 report from the J2 intelligence group serving the U.S. Department of Defense. The main document concerns what the U.S. knew and didn't know about Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction programs.

Governments in the Asia-Pacific region face the risk of unprecedented numbers of people displaced by floods, storms and other impacts of climate change, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said in a report on Monday.

As part of its strategy to bring broadband service to rural areas, the Federal Communications Commission will decide today how to reform the Universal Service Fund, set up in the 1930s to fund networks in underserved areas.

A battle is brewing over control of South Africa’s key mining sector.

Policymakers are operating under the fallacy that the lower one's currency is, the better it is for the economy.

Protests demanding an immediate end to Hosni Mubarak’s rule entered the 15th day on Tuesday with protesters pitching their tents in central Cairo’s Tahrir Square and refusing to leave until their demands are met.

Six months ahead of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the United States had little hard evidence and relied heavily on analytic assumptions and judgment in assessing what it knew about Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs, according to declassified U.S. intellilgence report.

Restaurant chain Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. (NYSE: CMG) has apparently fired hundreds of workers in Minnesota in the wake of a probe into the company’s hiring practices by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Texas Senator Kirk Watson filed a bill last week that would make sexting - sending or receiving pornographic images via cell phones - illegal.

The British government said it will increase the levy on banks by £800-million to £2.5-billion this year – and that it will be permanent.

China raised interest rates for the third time since the height of the financial crisis in response to accelerating consumer and asset inflation. The inflation rate and the interest rate hikes in the country are stages of a normal economic cycle, although it's happening with an international twist.

With increasing number of government and other high-profile websites being targeted almost everyday, 'hacktivism' seems to have reached its peak. The recent targets of 'hacktivists' are listed here.

Iran has unveiled domestically manufactured satellites and a satellite-carrier rocket and would launch several new locally built satellites within the next 13 months.

Military brass of both South and North Koreas met on Tuesday morning almost two months after an artillery exchange that destroyed an island near Seoul.

Compromising pictures of Italian Prime Minister Silvilo Berlusconi are on sale for 1 million pounds.

U.S. defence contractor Northrop Grumman expects India to seal a deal to spend $11 billion on new fighter jets by the end of this year, as it supplies fuselage and radars to manufacturers bidding for the order, an executive said on Monday.

India is probing two new cases involving the allocation of telecoms spectrum, increasing the pressure on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government already hit by a telecoms graft scandal, local media reported on Tuesday.

A robotic, bat-winged jet resembling a miniature B-2 stealth bomber achieved successful first flight on Monday at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

One of the many ironies of American politics is that while top Republican politicians are eager to show their support for the state of Israel, Jewish voters in the U.S. remain overwhelmingly in the camp of the Democratic Party.

A Chechen warlord – one of the most wanted men in Russia – has taken responsibility for carrying out the suicide bomb attack last month which killed 36 people and injured 180 in a Moscow airport.

Even as results of a landmark vote show the people of Southern Sudan have decided to form a new nation and international leaders congratulate them, recent reported violent incidents in the North and South indicate that peace in the embattled nation is fragile.

George W. Bush, the former president of the U.S., cancelled a trip to Switzerland for next weekend due to potential protest demonstrations by human rights groups over the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay as well as the threat of his arrest

Republican Governor Rick Scott, who was just elected last November in a very close race, unveiled a budget that envisions $5 billion in spending cuts and almost 9,000 jobs slashed from the public sector.

Speaking at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation event in Washington, F.C.C. Chairman Julius Genachowski said the U.S. needs to take action on its broadband problem.

EUR/USD is headed higher, said Douglas Borthwick, head of trading at Faros Trading, a foreign exchange advisory and execution firm.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) has proposed new rules that will mandate large financial institutions to delay payment of 50 percent of executive bonuses for a period of three years in order to discourage risky financial activities.