Asia will receive a stockpile of 500,000 courses of H1N1 flu drugs by April next year to supplement any shortfall in the region, an official with a Japanese donor agency said on Tuesday.

Seven Papua New Guineans adrift in the Pacific Ocean for more than two months have been rescued but two have since died, the captain of the vessel which picked them up said Tuesday.

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.