Amman - Arab stock markets plummeted across the board on Tuesday as global recession fears and falling oil prices helped to fuel already dwindling confidence and panic selling, financial analysts said.

The plunge was led by the Saudi and the United Arab Emirates stock exchanges where lack of cash and departure of foreign investors reportedly put enormous pressures on the psychology of investors, they added.

The Tadawul All Share Index (TASI) of the Saudi stock exchange tumbled 5.21 per cent led by the petrochemical conglomerate, the Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC), as well as the banking and construction sectors.

Kathmandu - A Nepalese teenager dubbed the "Buddha boy" has resurfaced in southern Nepal, a year after he disappeared from his meditation place, police said Tuesday.

Ram Bahadur Bomjam, 18, captured the imagination of Nepalese in 2005 when he reportedly meditated in a jungle for several months without food, water or sleep.

He quietly left the site in a jungle in southern Nepal last year, after thousands of people had made their way to get a glimpse of him.

Cairo - A previously unknown pyramid estimated to be 4,300 years old was discovered in Egypt's desert, Egypt's Secretary General of Antiques Zahi Hawass said on Tuesday.

The pyramid, five metres high with a square base of 22 metres on each side, is believed to belong to Queen Seshseshet, mother of King Teti, the first king of ancient Egypt's Sixth Dynasty, Hawass said.

Teti came to power in 2323 BC.

The pyramid is the 118th discovered in Egypt and originally was 14 metres tall, Hawass said at a press conference.

Vatican City - The Vatican's top health issues official reiterated Tuesday the Roman Catholic Church's opposition to embryonic stem cell research - a field of study supported by US president-elect Barack Obama.

Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan said stem cells taken from human embryos and involving the destruction of the embryos, "served no purpose with no health cure to date" resulting from such scientific research.

The Church instead championed research on adult stem cells that, Barragan said, have been shown to have "positive value."

Damascus - Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebary arrived in Damascus on Tuesday in the first visit by an Iraqi official since the US cross-border attack on the Syrian village of Abu Kamal in late October.

The visit comes as "a good will gesture" from the Iraqi government to show its concern to maintain brotherly relations with Syria, Ahmad al-Saad, the press attache of the Iraqi embassy in Damascus told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Copenhagen - The recent bankruptcy of low-cost carrier Sterling Airlines has cost Copenhagen's Kastrup airport an estimated 50 million kroner (8.6 million dollars), the airport said Tuesday.

Danish-based Sterling Airlines filed for bankruptcy on October 29, citing it had been impacted by the global financial recession and "significant fuel cost increases."