AP - Republican presidential candidate John McCain, ridiculing Barack Obama for "the audacity of hopelessness" in his policies on Iraq, said Friday that the entire Middle East could have plunged into war had U.S. troops been withdrawn as his rival advocated.

AFP - US professor Randy Pausch, who shot to global fame because of the inspirational "Last Lecture" he delivered just weeks after learning he had terminal cancer, died Friday, the university where he taught said.

AP - Only jalapeno peppers grown in Mexico are implicated in the nationwide salmonella outbreak, the government announced Friday in clearing the U.S. crop.

AP - Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist whose "last lecture" about facing terminal cancer became an Internet sensation and a best-selling book, died Friday. He was 47.

Global trade talks that earlier looked near collapse have made progress and a deal might now be possible.

PASSENGERS on a Qantas jumbo have hailed their pilot as a hero after an emergency landing sparked by a gigantic hole in the plane's fuselage.

AN explosion has destroyed a bank building in Brisbane in what has been likened to a scene from a wild western movie.

STRICKEN Qantas passengers head home amid revelations their plane had history of corrosion.

FORMER NASA astronaut and moon-walker Dr Edgar Mitchell says governments have hushed up multiple alien contacts with earth.

AIR safety investigators are today trying to determine what ripped a huge hole in the side of an ageing Qantas jumbo jet with previous corrosion issues.

AN explosion has destroyed a bank building in Brisbane in what has been likened to a scene from a wild western movie.

More evidence of tampering from Microsoft: In the E-mail, Bill Gates complains Microsoft do the work, and the result is that it works great on Linux! He didn't explicitly say that Microsoft should do this, he seemed to be toying with the idea of making the API's work well with Windows and not with other OS'es.

EXCLUSIVE: THE Qantas plane forced to make an emergency landing yesterday after a huge hole tore through its side had been plagued by a history of corrosion.