World news: Soldiers die in ambush by rebels

Islamist militants who overran a town in southern Yemen killed five soldiers in an ambush, while fresh clashes erupted between government forces and fighters loyal to the country's top tribal leader.

Yesterday's violence pushed Yemen even closer to the edge of a civil war.

Nearly four months of mass protests calling for democratic reforms and the departure of President Ali Abdullah Saleh have rocked the country.

Japan 'underestimated tsunami nuclear threat'

An International Atomic Energy Agency team said Japan's nuclear authorities underestimated the possibility of a massive tsunami hitting the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant but praised the overall response.

The preliminary report submitted today said Japan's response was exemplary.

However, it added that the tsunami hazard for several nuclear sites was underestimated and called for greater preparation.

The IAEA team was to submit its full report at an IAEA conference in Vienna from June 20 to 24. The experts were in Japan for one week.

The Fukushima Dai-ichi facility was crippled when a tsunami generated by a major earthquake hit Japan on March 11.

The UN team was led by Britain's top nuclear safety official Mike Weightman and includes experts from France, Russia, China and the United States.

The inspectors pointed out a key failure, already admitted by Japan, to plan for the risk of waves crashing over the sea wall and knocking out the plant's back-up generators.

Even though a major faultline lies just offshore, the sea wall at Fukushima was less than six metres high. The tsunami wave was about 14m high.

Demand to probe poet's death

Chile's Communist Party wants a formal investigation into the death of the country's revered poet Pablo Neruda, who officially died of cancer days after the 1973 coup toppled his close friend, President Salvador Allende.

Neruda's driver claims the Nobel laureate was poisoned by government agents.

Immigrants' boat capsizes

Malaysia's coast guard is searching for 13 illegal immigrants from Indonesia who are missing at sea after their boat capsized.

An official in the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency says 17 other Indonesians have been rescued.Some were found by a merchant ship that spotted them adrift off southern Malaysia after their vessel capsized before dawn Wednesday.

The cause of the accident was not immediately known.

Syria offers to free prisoners

Syrian president Bashar Assad issued a general amnesty for prisoners that includes those deemed to have committed political "crimes" as pressure built from a ten-week-old uprising.

The offer was swiftly rejected by the opposition as just another plot by the regime to gain time.

Forklift attack man charged

A MAN has appeared in court charged with using a forklift to pick up his girlfriend's car with her inside, carrying the vehicle for several feet, then dropping it.

Brian Hurley, 41, appeared at Springfield District Court, Massachusetts on charges including assault with a dangerous weapon.