Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia's opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim on Thursday demanded a special Parliament session to hold a vote of no confidence against the government, after his request to meet embattled Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was flatly rejected.

Anwar, who has claimed to have more than enough defecting government lawmakers to topple the government, said the emergency session needs to be held no later than Tuesday to "deliberate a motion of censure or no-confidence in the leadership of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi."

Athens/Nicosia - Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders are meeting on Thursday to discuss power-sharing and governance in a new round of peace talks set on ending a decades old conflict and reunite the divided Mediterranean island.

It is the third meeting between Cyprus President Dimitris Christofias and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehemt Ali Talat since they launched a new round of peace talks on September 3.

Peace talks have been deadlocked after former president Tassos Papadopoulos led the Greek-Cypriot rejection of a UN reunification plan in a 2004 referendum.

Turkish Cypriots had overwhelmingly voted in favour.

Wellington - New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters, who blames the media for instigating a series of inquiries into secret donations to his party, apologised to reporters Thursday after failing to get them into a closed doors hearing of parliament's privileges committee.

Kathmandu, Sept 18: Former Nepal’s Prime Minister and president of Nepali Congress Girija Prasad Koirala today said his party follows the principles of socialism, which are a combined form of parliamentary democracy and communism.

Addressing a function organised by party's student wing, Nepal Student Union (NSU) here, Koirala criticised the statement by Prime Minister Prachanda that Nepal now would have neither a parliamentary system nor a communist rule.

Washington, Sept. 17: Arizona Senator and Republican presidential candidate John McCain has a major problem on his hands, and that is how to neutralize the political and the economic impact of the meltdown on Wall Street.

According to the Washington Post, McCain may not have single-handedly created this problem, but he has made it worse by uttering the words -- "the fundamentals of our economy are strong".

This, without doubt, is a clear evidence of a badly delivered statement.

New York, Sept. 18: Racism has come to the fore again in the United States more than four decades after blacks were granted their civil and civic rights.

Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius has attracted praise for being realistic, controversy and criticism by issuing a statement that said that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama could still lose the elections because he is “black”.