Harare - Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has described as "devastating" the removal from office of his South African counterpart Thabo Mbeki, who is seen as a key ally of the of ageing authoritarian Mugabe in the last eight years.

"It's devastating news that President Thabo Mbeki is no longer the president of South Africa," the Zimbabwe's state-controlled daily Herald newspaper quoted Mugabe as saying Thursday.

"But that is the action of the South African people," he added. "Who are we to judge them? But it is very disturbing."

Mugabe was speaking to journalists from Zimbabwe's state media in New York where he is due to address the United Nations general assembly.

Vienna - With only three days to go before general elections, Austria's parliament passed several social spending bills which had been initiated by the Social Democratic Party (SPOe).

At the end of a 19-hour special session that lasted until early Thursday morning, lawmakers decided to abolish public university fees and raise government allowances for nursing care and for families.

The ruling Social Democrats formed various voting coalitions with different parties to push their bills through.

New York, Sept. 25: New York, Sept. 25 (ANI): Faced with the possibility of a media blackout, Alaska Governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, has been forced into doing more interviews in the run-up to the November 4 presidential and vice-presidential elections. In a her third interview since accepting the Republican vice-presidential nomination earlier this month, Palin said that she believed that her to be boss – John McCain – has the required credentials to bring the ailing US economy back on track.

Washington, Sept. 25: U. S. President George W. Bush appealed to the nation Wednesday night to support a 700 billion dollar plan to avert a financial meltdown on Wall Street.

He also invited both major presidential candidates – John McCain and Barack Obama to join him and Congressional leaders at the White House on Thursday to forge a bipartisan compromise.

Washington - Republican candidate John McCain upstaged Democratic opponent Barack Obama by suspending his campaign to deal with the nation's financial crisis, an attempt to overcome the Arizona senator's perceived disadvantage on economic issues.

In taking the extraordinary step away from the campaign trail and heading to Washington, McCain hopes to show that he can set aside politics for the good of he country. He called on Obama to agree to a delay of the first presidential debate scheduled for Friday, so the two candidates can return to the US Senate.

Baghdad  - Iraqi parliament adopted on Wednesday a new provincial elections law after months of heated dispute on the issue of power-sharing in the multi-ethnic Kirkuk.

"The Iraqi parliament had unanimously adopted a provincial elections law," lawmaker Ahmed Anwar of the Kurdistan Alliance bloc, told the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency.

The head of the Fadila party, Hassan Shammari said earlier that the parliamentary blocs reached a consensus on the article related to Kirkuk, the oil rich northern area inhabited by Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen.