About two dozen Taliban militants -- at least some dressed in US military uniforms -- were killed Saturday in a failed attempt to storm two US-run bases in a city in eastern Afghanistan, NATO said.

Hundreds of thousands of people were fleeing areas of southern Pakistan on Saturday as rising floodwaters breached more defences and inundated towns.

Pakistan ordered nearly half a million people to evacuate towns on Thursday as rising floods threaten further havoc in a country straining to cope with its worst humanitarian disaster.

More than 120,000 people have been evacuated in northeast China following devastating floods that have already left four dead and forced the relocation of thousands in neighbouring North Korea.

Police on Sunday were investigating the killing of eight foreign medics, including six Americans, shot dead in remote northern Afghanistan, as US authorities flew the bodies back to the capital.

The daily mortality rate in Moscow has doubled and morgues are overflowing amid an acrid smog caused by the worst heatwave in Russia's thousand-year history, officials said Monday.

Australia won a third successive Champions Trophy, and 11th in all, with a comprehensive 4-0 mauling of England on Sunday, shrugging off a 60-minute rain delay in the process.

President Hugo Chavez said Friday that Venezuela has deployed military units and troops to the Colombian border, because outgoing President Alvaro Uribe is "capable of anything," as a row escalates between the two.

The death toll from Pakistan's worst floods in living memory topped 1,000 Sunday as outbreaks of water-borne disease emerged and penniless survivors sought refuge from the raging torrents.

Firefighters on Sunday pressed on with battling forest fires that have killed at least 30 people, destroyed thousands of homes and forced the mobilisation of hundreds of thousands of emergency workers.