President | featured news

Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in a stunning decision that honored the first-year U.S. president more for promise than achievement and drew both praise and skepticism around the world.

Two stations that regularly broadcast calls from the deposed president were closed in a crackdown on civil liberties by the de facto government.

The unrelenting global troubles confronting Barack Obama are about to converge on him all at once, providing a stern test of leadership for a first-year president who has pledged to "change the world."

Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou said Sunday he accepts responsibility for the government's slow response after Typhoon Morakot slammed into the island killing at more than 120 people and unleashing floods, mudslides and misery.

Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme was released from prison today, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons said. Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson, was convicted in 1975 of pointing a gun at President Ford. Secret Service agents prevented her from firing.

India's MPs protest after it emerges that former president APJ Abdul Kalam was frisked before boarding a flight to the US.

Voting has ended in Indonesia's presidential election, with exit polls suggesting the incumbent, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, has a clear lead.

China's president cut short a G8 summit trip to hurry home Wednesday after ethnic tensions soared in Xinjiang territory, with sobbing Muslim women scuffling with riot police and Chinese men with steel pipes and meat cleavers rampaging through the streets.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sought to put the turmoil over the disputed presidential elections behind him and declared on national television that the contests were clean, fair and were the start of a new era.

Indonesia's president, whose popular economic policies and corruption-free image boosted him to the top of pre-election polls, is counting on a single-round victory next Wednesday.