Sydney, Aug. 12 : Singapore Airlines has been named the world''s best airline in the 2008 Airline of the Year awards. Cathay Pacific and Qantas came second and third respectively in the annual survey.

Singapore won the title for the second year in a row and the third time in 10 years. The airline also took out the award for best business class.

Qantas also won the award for best first class lounge, best economy class catering and best airline in Australasia.

Sydney, Aug 12 : If a senior Pakistan journalist is to be believed, US President George Bush has given a royal snub to his old time “anti-terror ally” and Pakistani counterpart Pervez Musharraf, by repeatedly failing to respond to the latter’s phone calls over the past few days.

Bush’s ‘ignoring’ attitude is said to be the result of American strategists’ warning that Pakistan''s intensifying political power struggle was ‘imperilling’ the US-led war against al-Qa''ida and the Taliban.

Singapore - Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was set to kick off his visit Tuesday in Singapore by laying a wreath in remembrance of Allied soldiers who died in South-East Asia during the two world wars.

Rudd, in his first official visit to the city-state as prime minister, was scheduled to meet with the top leaders after visiting Kranji war cemetery.

New Delhi - An Indian court on Monday sentenced to death two taxi drivers found guilty of the murder of an Australian woman tourist in Delhi in 2004, news reports said.

The two taxi drivers - Ashish Kumar and Jyotish Prasad - were given the sentences by a trial court for the rape and murder of 59- year-old Dawn Emelie Griggs, NDTV television channel reported.

Griggs, who had come to India from Hong Kong on March 17, 2004, was found brutally murdered near the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi.

Melbourne, Aug 11 : The ongoing Olympic Games will see a large number of veiled female athletes from various Muslim nations competing for events like sprinting, rowing, taekwondo and archery.

Most of these athletes have got themselves specially tailored aerodynamic veils, which expose only their face and hands.

All these veiled athletes are determined to avoid offending devout Muslims back home, as well as showing skimpily dressed rivals there is nothing constricting about wearing "hijab".

Melbourne, Aug 11 : Detectives from the Criminal Investigation Unit have been called in to help search for missing nine-year-old boy Yadav Munohur, who has been missing for last four days.

The search for Yadav will continue today along the Yarra River at Hawthorn where he was last seen. Searchers have failed to find any signs of him.

"We’re now into our fourth day and we’re very concerned,” a police spokeswoman said.