Two Buddhists have been arrested after Muslim shops were destroyed in northern Kachin State, police said Saturday, in a new outbreak of religious violence.

Bangladesh's finance minister downplayed the impact of last week's factory-building collapse on his country's garment industry, saying he didn't think it was “really serious” Friday, hours after the 500th body was pulled from the debris.

Fiji's military regime said Friday it had given three political parties permission to contest elections scheduled for next year, the first vote since a 2006 coup in the South Pacific nation.

Bangladesh's garment firms re-opened and rushed to complete delayed orders for their Western clients on Thursday after an eight-day shutdown caused by the deaths of at least 433 people in a building collapse.

A new account of a brawl on Mount Everest which emerged Wednesday said one of the foreign climbers involved had sworn at a group of Nepalese guides and challenged them to a fight.

Syria peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is on the verge of quitting amid growing frustration at deadlocked international efforts to end the worsening conflict, diplomats said Wednesday.

Thousands of workers paraded through central Dhaka on May Day to demand safer working conditions and the death penalty for the owner of a building housing garment factories that collapsed last week in the country's worst industrial disaster, killing at least 402 people and injuring 2,500.

They slept terrified in the fields, watching their homes burn through the night. And when they returned Wednesday, nothing was left but smoldering ash and debris.

Pakistan's powerful army chief has suggested the military is unhappy with how authorities have treated former army chief and President Pervez Musharraf since his return from exile.

A top Bangladesh court on Tuesday ordered the government to “immediately” confiscate the property of a collapsed building's owner, as thousands of protesters demanding the death penalty for the man clashed with police, leaving 100 people injured.