Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's personal rating with voters has fallen in the past two weeks as he struggles to stem a rise in boatpeople arrivals, but his government remains ahead.

Twin Bangladeshi girls who were joined at the top of their heads and shared blood vessels and brain tissue were successfully separated Tuesday after 25 hours of delicate surgery, hospital officials said.

Police say a bomb targeting a police chief's vehicle in southwestern Pakistan has killed one person and injured six others.

The deaths of 12 civilians in a rocket attack presumably aimed at military officials and local leaders underscores the inability of NATO to successfully defeat the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan, an official said Tuesday.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter helped the housing charity that he champions, Habitat for Humanity, launch a campaign Monday to build homes for 50,000 families in the Mekong River region over the next five years.

A marathon and risky operation to separate Bangladeshi twins joined at the head, which they have only a one in four chance of both surviving, was going well Monday, surgeons said.

Insurgents fired two rockets Monday into a crowded market northeast of Kabul where the head of French forces in Afghanistan was holding a meeting with tribal elders.

The son of Philippines democracy icon Corazon “Cory” Aquino continued to lead candidates for the 2010 presidential election, an opinion poll said on Monday.

A ferry boat has sunk after a collision in a river in Myanmar's Ayeyarwady Delta, killing at least eight passengers and leaving more than three dozen missing.

Detained Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has requested a meeting with the military regime's top leader, adding to signs that lines of communication are opening up between her and the junta.