Pakistan's ruling coalition will face a defining moment for its possible breakup on Monday after the three-day talks on the judges' issue in London ended in deadlock.

    After the talks, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) failed to reach a deal on restoring the judges sacked by President Pervez Musharraf last year under a state of emergency.

    Earlier, the two coalition parties had held talks on the issue in Dubai and failed to bridge their differences.

    The PML-N pledged unconditional reinstatement of the judges through a single resolution, while the PPP maintained that the reinstatement of the judges should be part of a package of constitutional amendments.

    The PPP and PML-N won the Feb. 18 elections and formed a coalition government, putting the judges' issue top on the agenda.

    The PML-N, led by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, set May 12 as the deadline for reinstating the judges after the two sides failed to meet the first deadline set on April 30.

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No, we're not talking about software bugs (though those viruses can indeed still rear their heads), but good old insects. There are, naturally, numerous scientifically minded sites like bugbios.com throughout the Web, but insects are also finding staring roles in the online entertainment world.

As is true with so much on the Internet, sex is what's generating interest.

More than three million people have watched a YouTube video documenting the mating rituals of leopard slugs whereby two entwined slugs suspend themselves from a branch and fertilise each other in mid-air.

Titled "Slug Sex," the video was lifted from the thoroughly impressive BBC documentary series "Life in the Undergrowth," hosted by David Attenborough.

On YouTube, where so often the most popular videos tease sex or skin, the success of these slugs in love is both odd and perfectly fitting.

Commenters have variously called it the "No. 1 love scene" and sarcastically wondered why YouTube would allow pornography. (The site's community guidelines specify: "YouTube is not for pornography or sexually explicit content" presumably referring only to mammals)

The line between insects and humans is further blurred by, of all people, Isabella Rossellini. The 55-year-old actress ("Blue Velvet," "Death Becomes Her") wrote, co-directed and stars in a series of eight short films titled "Green Porno."
The films have been making their way around the festival circuit, first playing at the Sundance Film Festival and, most recently, at the Tribeca Film Festival. In full-bodied costumes, Rossellini plays insects such as an earthworm, a firefly and a praying mantis, and describes their methods of reproduction.

As a spider with six eyes and eight limbs, Rossellini seriously but comically acts out the delicate approach the male spider must take to court a female. It's a bugged-out video, for sure.

It was also made with even smaller screens in mind; "Green Porno" is available on mobile phones through Helio the only time you might willfully put bugs in your phone.

Leaders of Pakistan's ruling coalition are due to meet in London this week to resolve differences over how to reinstate judges dismissed in November by President Pervez Musharraf, officials said on Thursday.

Strains over the issue within the month-old coalition, led by the party of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, have raised speculation that the anti-Musharraf alliance could collapse, though party leaders have asserted their unity.

Western allies in the war on terrorism dread nuclear-armed Pakistan sliding into a prolonged period of instability.

Critics fear the failure to move forward over the judges has diverted Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani's government from more pressing issues like rising inflation, deteriorating trade and fiscal deficits and the fight against Islamist militancy.

Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto's widower who succeeded her as leader of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), was due to fly to London on Thursday to meet Nawaz Sharif, the leader of the second largest party in the coalition, after their aides failed to bridge differences over how to restore the judges.

Former prime minister Sharif, leader of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) is in London, where his wife is receiving medical treatment.

"I was leaving for Pakistan but Mr Zardari asked me to stay back for a meeting," Sharif told private Geo television.

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The Chaitén volcano in southern Chile blasted ash and what appeared to be lava a dozen miles into the air on Tuesday, leading the government to order the immediate and complete evacuation of everyone living within a 30-mile radius of it.

Preceded by dozens of tremors, the volcano until now considered inactive began erupting last Friday. It covered about 60 square miles with more than 15 inches of ash, rendering the air unbreathable, contaminating water sources, killing livestock and destroying all small- and medium-scale agriculture in this rural and mostly impoverished area 800 miles south of the capital, Santiago.

An enormous gray mushroom cloud of ash that could be seen from 100 miles away has since loomed over this sliver of land next to Argentina, where continental Chile breaks up into archipelagos. East winds have spread ash toward Argentina. The thick layer of volcanic ash, coupled with rain, has made access to the sparsely populated border zone difficult.

President Michelle Bachelet visited the area on Monday, announcing subsidies and other aid for affected families. On Tuesday, she convened an emergency committee of government ministers, emergency agency representatives, the director of the police force and regional officials.

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Alaska Native and environmental groups sued Monday to stop exploration by oil companies this summer in Arctic waters frequented by whales, seals and other marine species.

The groups are challenging federal permits that allow Shell Oil Co. and BP PLC to search for oil and gas using powerful acoustic devices that have been shown, at times, to harm a variety of marine animals.

The technology, known as seismic exploration, is used to determine the geologic makeup of the sea bed.

"The federal government is rushing to approve a burst of new seismic activity without completely studying the effects on marine life," said attorney Clayton Jernigan of Earthjustice. The nonprofit law firm's Juneau office filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Anchorage.

The acoustic signals could disrupt tens of thousands of animals as they feed, socialize and travel through the seas of northern Alaska, according to the lawsuit.

This is especially worrisome to Alaska Natives in the region who depend on the marine mammals for food and worry they will desert traditional hunting areas for quieter waters.

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Myanmar's ruling military junta was expected to issue a rare request for international emergency assistance Monday as more details emerged of the scale of the humanitarian crisis facing the cyclone-stricken southeast Asian country.

The Associated Press reported that resident ambassadors had been summoned to a foreign ministry meeting after a state of emergency was declared across much of the country following the 10-hour storm that left at least 350 people believed dead and swathes of devastation in its wake.

The government of neghboring Thailand said Myanmar's leaders had already requested food, medical supplies and construction equipment, AP reported. The first plane-load of supplies was due to arrive Tuesday, a Thai spokesman said.

Scenes of the destruction showed flooding, roofs ripped off buildings, uprooted trees and downed power lines after cyclone Nargis battered the Irrawaddy delta throughout Friday night and Saturday morning.

"After about noon, the sky cleared and everybody came out and were just stunned," said Shari Villarosa, U.S. Charge D' Affaires in Yangon. "People on my compound who had been there for about 15 years say they had not seen anything like this here, ever."

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The Al-Jazeera cameraman released from U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay who returned home to Sudan early Friday after six years of imprisonment, will be free to resume his work and his movements will not be restricted in any way, a Sudanese presidential adviser said.

The official, Mahjoub Fadul, said Khartoum would do everything it can to help the released detainees reclaim their dignity.

"Let me state very clearly here that Sami al-Haj and his colleagues will exercise all their rights," Fadul said during a press conference in Khartoum. "We are not taking dictates from any quarters ... how we treat our citizens."

Al-Haj, whose detention drew worldwide condemnation, and two other Sudanese released from Guantanamo prison in Cuba Thursday, arrived at the airport in Sudan's capital Khartoum on a U.S. military plane. The cameraman, who had been on a hunger strike for the past 16 months, grimaced as he was carried off the plane by U.S. military personnel. He was put on a stretcher and taken straight to a hospital.

Al-Jazeera showed footage of al-Haj on a stretcher, looking feeble with his eyes closed but smiling. Some of the men surrounding his stretcher were kissing him on the cheek.
"Thank God...for being free again," he told Al-Jazeera from his hospital bed. "Our eyes have the right to shed tears after we have spent all those years in prison. ... But our joy is not going to be complete until our brothers in Guantanamo Bay are freed."

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An American missile strike in Somalia apparently killed a militant long identified as one of Al Qaeda’s top operatives in East Africa on Thursday, but while Bush administration officials claimed success they also acknowledged facing an uphill battle to score lasting blows in their final months against the terrorist group around the world.
Political resistance from the new government in Pakistan, restrictions on pursuing militants across Afghanistan’s borders and the possibility of popular resentment in Somalia driving new recruits to militant Islam are the kinds of hurdles administration officials said could be left to the next president.

American officials portrayed the attack on the operative, Aden Hashi Ayro, as a product of intensified intelligence gathering in which they tracked him for weeks and made use of the free rein granted to the Pentagon in carrying out attacks in Somalia’s largely ungoverned spaces. Thursday’s attack was arguably the most successful American strike against Islamic militants outside of Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan since a deadly strike in Yemen in 2002, reflecting broader American concerns about terrorist havens in Africa.

Mr. Ayro was one of the most feared and notorious figures in Somalia, a short, wispy man believed to be in his 30s who had gone from lowly car washer to a top terrorist suspect blamed for a string of atrocities, including killing a BBC journalist, desecrating an Italian graveyard and planning suicide attacks all across Somalia. He was a military commander for the Shabab, an Islamist militia, which the American government recently classified as a terrorist group, saying it was linked to Al Qaeda.

The United States has failed to contain Al Qaeda in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan, and struggles even in Somalia, where the government gave the green light 16 months ago for American strikes on militants there.

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Marine scientists studying the carcass of a rare colossal squid said Wednesday they had measured its eye at about 11 inches across larger than a dinner plate and the biggest animal eye on earth.

One of the quid's two eyes, with a lens as big as an orange, was found intact as the scientists examined the creature while it was slowly defrosted at New Zealand's national museum, Te Papa Tongarewa. It has been preserved there since being caught in the Ross Sea off Antarctica's northern coast last year.

"This is the only intact eye (of a colossal squid) that's ever been found. It's spectacular," said Auckland University of Technology squid specialist Kat Bolstad, one of a team of international scientists brought in to examine the creature.

"It's the largest known eye in the animal kingdom," Bolstad told The Associated Press.

The squid is the biggest specimen ever caught of the rare and mysterious deep-water species Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, or colossal squid. It is 26 feet long and weighs almost 1,000 pounds, but scientists believe the species may grow as long as 46 feet.

"This is the largest eye ever recorded in history and studied," said Swedish professor Eric Warrant of the University of Lund, who specializes in vision in invertebrates. "It has a huge lens the size of an orange and captures an awful lot of light in the dark depths in which it hunts."

They can descend to 2 kilometers (6,500 feet) and are known to be aggressive hunters. 

A 73-year-old man has confessed to holding his daughter captive in his home cellar for nearly 24 years and fathering seven children by her, Austrian police say.Austrian police spokesman Franz Polzer says the man, known as Mr. F., has admitted holding his daughter hostage for more than two decades and raping her repeatedly.

He also told police that one of the children he fathered by his daughter Elisabeth F was a twin who died.

The dead baby's body was burned in an oven inside the house, Mr. F. told detectives.

He was making an extended confession to investigators Monday, according to Polzer.

Further DNA tests will now be carried out to confirm fatherhood, Polzer said.

Elisabeth F, 42, is described as "very disturbed" and having trouble talking to police about her ordeal, reports CNN correspondent Fred Pleitgen.

She went missing in 1984, when she was 18 years old, police said at a news conference Sunday.

The situation came to light earlier this month after her daughter -- a 19-year-old woman, identified as Kristen F. -- was hospitalized in Amstetten after falling unconscious, according to police.

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