DHAKA, Saturday (AFP) - Thousands of people are believed dead and millions are homeless and destitute after the worst cyclone in years tore through impoverished Bangladesh, officials said Saturday. More than 1,723 people were confirmed to have died and the number was rising by the hour as soldiers and relief workers battled to reach the worst-hit coastal districts that were smashed late Thursday as cyclone Sidr roared in from the Bay of Bengal.“We are expecting that thousands of bodies may be found within a few days,” the deputy head of the government's disaster management office, Shekhar Chandra Das, told AFP in the capital Dhaka.

ISLAMABAD, Saturday (AFP)- Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf told a top US diplomat today that he would only end his emergency rule when the security situation improves, a senior presidential aide told AFP. Musharraf met John Negroponte, number two in the US State Department, for talks which diplomats had said the US official would use to deliver a “very strong message” to end the two-week old state of emergency.

VALENCIA, Spain, Saturday (AFP) - The world's top scientific authority on climate change was set to adopt a landmark report today that warns that the impacts of global warming are already visible, will accelerate this century and are potentially irreversible.The document crafted by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) summarises the first overview on the greenhouse-gas effect since 2001.