London, July 26 : Aviation experts are of the view that a bomb may have caused the hole in the side of the Boeing 747 Qantas flight that was on its way to Melbourne from London.

Qantas flight QF30, with 300 passengers and crew on board, plunged 20,000ft after the missing panel caused an "explosive" depressurisation.

New Delhi, July 26 : The Standing Committee of the Sichuan Provincial People''s Congress has waived aside the `One Child’ policy for parents affected by the May 12 Sichuan earthquake.

Affected parents have been given the right to have another child, as also those whose only child was seriously wounded in the quake.

Lahore, July 26 : Pakistani Christians are considered “Westerners” despite their efforts in the country’s independence movement and nation building.

Community Development Initiatives (CDI) Executive Director Asif Aqeel said: “It is an interesting fact that these Christians are aboriginals and the remnants of the Indus
Valley Civilisation. It was the Aryan conquest that brought these people to the status where they were considered untouchables.”

Melbourne, July 26 : Organisers of next month’s Beijing Olympics have received a fresh threat from the separatist Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP), which has already claimed responsibility for the May bus bombing in Shanghai.

A group monitoring terror threats on the Internet was quoted by The Herald as saying that TIP Commander Seyfullah has claimed credit for several attacks in China less than a fortnight out from the start of the Olympics.

Seyfullah says in a video clip monitored by the Washington-based Intel Center that more attacks will take place from Yunnan, the base of TIP.

Geneva - A key round of talks in Geneva aimed at reviving the World Trade Organization's Doha Round will continue after a break-off was prevented as a result of concessions made the previous day above all by industrialised states, diplomats said Saturday.

Diplomatic sources said the concessions included an offer by the United States to reduce the cap on subsidies for its agrcultural produce limit to 14.5 billion dollars a year.

The US had already reduced this to 15 billion from an original figure of 16.4 billion. The sources said a reduction by European Union countries of EU tariffs by 80 per cent - instead of the 60 per cent already offered - was now widely expected.

New York - The United Nations mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) said Friday its power to administer the former Serb province has practically disappeared after the government in Pristina instituted its constitution last month.

Lamberto Zannier, the new head of UNMIK, told the UN Security Council in New York that the ethnic Albanian-led Kosovo government has sought to assume powers and responsibilities of a "sovereign state" since the "Constitution of the Republic of Kosovo" entered into force on June 15.