The White House has privately ruled out suggestions that the US should go to war against Syria following its military success in Iraq, and has blocked preliminary planning for such a campaign in the Pentagon.

Health officials in Hong Kong are trying to establish why six relatively young patients suffering from Sars — the pneumonia-like disease which has spread from the mainland — have died.

Tikrit was the final target of the air and ground operation mounted by American and British forces in Iraq, the last major town to be overrun after three and a half weeks of heavy bombing and shelling.

Seven American soldiers seized by the Iraqis and paraded on television described in vivid detail yesterday how they were captured and held in harrowing conditions for three weeks before being rescued by marines.

Anti-war protesters in San Francisco recently barricaded the gates of Bechtel, the engineering group that oversaw the construction of the Channel tunnel.

The radical Indonesian cleric thought to have masterminded last year’s Bali bombing is to be tried for attempting to overthrow the government and establish an Islamic state, prosecutors said yesterday.

New York’s smoking ban reached new heights of controversy when a bouncer was stabbed to death for asking a smoker to put out his cigarette.

Mutating: Scientists in California have provided the first detailed look at how human antibodies may drive HIV to mutate. The findings, reported last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States, may be key to efforts to develop an effective Aids vaccine.