British PM David Cameron, on a three-day visit to India, has clearly ruled out the return of the Kohinoor diamond to India, saying if such demands were agreed to, it would lead to empty rooms in British Museums.

A STATE coroner on Friday found that a young couple killed along an Upper Bukit Timah railway track last August were too intoxicated and tired to react and move themselves away from the path of an oncoming train.

Coroner Eddy Tham recorded a verdict of misadventure on the deaths of Republic Polytechnic students Mr Goh Sheng Yao, 19, and Miss Clara Lee Jing Yu, 20.

SY Quraishi on Friday took over as India’s new chief election commissioner (CEC), becoming the first Muslim in the country to occupy the post.

TRS has retained two Assembly constituencies and was leading in four others among the 12 Assembly segments in the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh where bypolls were held on July 27.

The Telangana Rashtra Samiti is leading in 11 constituencies and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in one as the counting of votes in the by-elections to 12 assembly seats in Andhra Pradesh’s Telangana region began on Friday morning.

At least four paramilitary CRPF troopers were killed and 15 injured, four of them critically, in a powerful landmine explosion Friday in Holmari in Assam’s Goalpara district.

THE flamboyant founder of Sunshine Empire, who amassed $180 million in 15 months, and his former director were jailed by a court on Friday for running a fraudulent scheme and for faking accounts.

James Phang Wah, 50, and former director Jackie Hoo Choon Cheat, 30, had enriched themselves by at least $8 million through Sunshine’s multi-level marketing scheme.

JOHOR BARU – A SINGAPOREAN family of three was among six people nabbed here recently in raids which also netted drugs said to be enough to supply 90,000 addicts in the city.

The drugs – ketamine and Ecstasy powder and pills weighing more than 8kg – are said to have a street value of more than RM500,000 (S$213,593).

POLICE have arrested 12 men and four women in an island-wide operation against unlicensed moneylending activities.

Officers from Clementi Police Division conducted simultaneous raids at various locations on Thursday in a 17- hour operation, resulting in the arrest of the suspects.

Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel, a top leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel, has been killed during a military raid in Guadalajara, Mexico, sources have told CNN.

Rising waters from flooding in northeastern China hit a chemical plant and washed thousands of containers filled with explosive chemicals into a river, state media said Thursday.

PETALING JAYA – THE alleged rapist who forced himself on a young girl in the school bus he was driving on Monday is believed to have made at least two other children victims of his lust.

One of them, it is learned, is the bus driver’s adopted daughter. Parents of the other child have not made any police report against the man.

At least 90 people have been killed since Wednesday due to floods caused by monsoon rains in northwest Pakistan, a provincial minister told CNN.

The fate of Andhra Pradesh Congress president D Srinivas, TRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao’s son K T Rama Rao and other candidates in the by-polls held for 12 assembly seats in Telangana region would be known on Friday.

SINGAPORE’S companies added an estimated 26,500 jobs to the total employment, continuing the gains for the third straight quarters as the economy expanded strongly from April to June.

But the job gains were lower than the 36,500 in the first quarter, as manufacturing shed 2,400 jobs, after adding 3,100 in the earlier quarter, said the Ministry of Manpower in a statement on Friday morning.

The man overseeing the federal response to the Gulf oil disaster will meet New Orleans parish presidents Thursday to outline the plans after the well is permanently sealed.

BANGKOK – A GRENADE exploded early on Friday on a street in central Bangkok, leaving one person seriously hurt in the latest violence in the Thai capital, still recovering from deadly protests, officials said.

The grenade was put in a plastic rubbish bag and dropped in Rangnam road near a duty-free shopping centre, police said. The injured person was a Thai man in his 30s who was searching for scrap.

Arab leaders gave the Palestinian Authority Thursday the green light for direct talks with Israel, a move that prompted the Israeli prime minister to say his country is ready for the face-to-face talks as well.

SCORES of morning rush-hour workers braved gusty winds and heavy rain as they headed to work on Friday.

A tree fell at Diary Farm Road, hitting and injuring a motorcyclist.

SCORES of morning rush-hour workers braved gusty winds and rain as they headed to work on Friday.

A tree fell at Diary Farm Road, hitting and injuring a motorcyclist.

A spokesman for the militant group Al-Shabaab denied Thursday that it has been involved in recent fighting in northeastern Somalia’s semiautonomous region of Puntland, but said the group supports it.

SINGAPORE won a total of 18 medals at four International Olympiads for Science and Mathematics in July.

Four teams brought in a total haul of four gold, 13 silver and one bronze medal and one honourable mention at the 21st International Biology Olympiad, 41st International Physics Olympiad, 42nd International Chemistry Olympiad and 51st International Mathematical Olympiad.