INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Alina Kabaeva, Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin's girlfriend and mother of his alleged love child born last year, has suddenly vanished, say reports.

A former gymnastics champion, Kabaeva has reportedly been Putin's secret girlfriend since 2006. She is more than 30 years younger than 57-year-old Putin.

The West Indies dominated world cricket for an era and Brian Lara was one of its greatest legends whose rise and brilliant career have been captured by Clifford Narinesingh in the book "Lara: The Untamed Spirit".

Lara's batting epitomised the West Indian approach to cricket which ensured the game's survival for many decades. That approach involved re-working the techniques of the game and discarding the 'safety first' tactics of the 1950s.

In an overhaul of the immigration policy, Australia will cancel 20,000 visa applications from foreign nationals, including Indians, who have been staying in the country under the existing skilled migration programme.

The changes which will be unveiled Monday will see 20,000 current applications binned as a result of an overhaul of the list that identifies occupations in demand and awards points on the basis of professional qualifications of the applicants.

In a fresh ultimatum demanding release of four terrorists imprisoned in Mali by March 1, north African wing of the Al Qaeda has offered to free two of the six European hostages in exchange.

The Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has set new deadlines of Feb 20 and March 1 for France and Italy respectively offering to free their nationals it has been holding captive for more than two months to secure the release of its members from Mali jails, according to a statement posted Saturday on SITE, extremists' websites monitoring group.

Talk show queen Oprah Winfrey just missed welcoming a new kind of guest on her show Thursday.

A pregnant Toronto woman was in the audience of "The Oprah Winfrey Show'' in Chicago when she went into labour and almost gave birth to her child on the sets, according to press reports.

Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia were digging out Sunday from a massive snowfall that paralysed the Mid-Atlantic region and left hundreds of thousands without power.

At its heaviest, the blizzard dumped 97 centimetres of snow from Friday morning to Saturday evening in Elkridge, Maryland, just south of Baltimore.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned that his country would soon start enriching uranium to 20 percent on its own if world powers "continue playing games" with the Islamic republic.

"We are still interested in cooperation (with the West), but if they wanted to continue playing games with the Iranian nation, then we would be prepared to do the 20 percent by ourselves," he said Sunday at a laser technology conference in Tehran.

A 14-year-old boy was killed when a huge rock dislodged by the torrential rain crushed his family home here in Bolivia, an official said Sunday.

The house was located at the foot of the Colorado hill in La Paz's Amor de Dios neighbourhood.