The World Health Organization dramatically cut its estimate on Thursday of how many people are infected with malaria every year, attributing the revision to changes in research methods.

The annual summer retreat of the sea ice cloaking the Arctic Ocean appears to have ended with the ice not quite matching last year's extraordinary recession, polar scientists said.

WASHINGTON: The U.S. House has approved a measure that would ease a longstanding ban on offshore oil drilling and try to spur greater use of alternative fuels as Democrats and Republicans engaged in a bitter pre-election clash over the nation's energy future.

CALCUTTA: Indian farmers have threatened to resume protests that have blocked construction of a factory to build Tata Motors' low-cost Nano car unless talks aimed at resolving a dispute over land bring results soon.

Climate change is changing all the rules in the Arctic. The polar ice cap is smaller by some 700,000 square miles than it was in the two decades before 2000. The annual melting of northern ice this year may well surpass last year's - the furthest retreat of Arctic ice in a single year since it was first measured.

BEIJING: Rescuers shoveled and hammered at debris on Wednesday, searching for survivors buried under sludge, mud and mining waste in northern China after a landslide that killed at least 56 people, but hopes of finding anybody alive faded.

SAN FRANCISCO: Google has begun scanning microfilm from some newspapers' historical archives to make them searchable online, first through Google News and eventually on the newspapers' own Web sites, the company said.

President Bush has failed to achieve so many of his foreign policy goals, but last weekend he proved that he can still get what he really wants. The administration bullied and wheedled international approval of the president's ill-conceived nuclear deal with India.

HAVANA: Hurricane Ike roared toward the densely populated Cuban capital and its fragile, historic buildings on Tuesday after forcing 1.2 million people to evacuate, killing at least four and ravaging homes elsewhere on the island nation.

Sichuan Province has about a quarter of the money it needs to rebuild after the earthquake in May that left 90,000 people dead and missing and destroyed much of its infrastructure, the newspaper China Daily said Tuesday.