Islamabad - At least 20 people were killed in a missile attack carried out by a suspected US drone in Pakistan's tribal region, officials said Monday.

A single missile fired from a pilotless aircraft hit the house of local Taliban commander Mohammad Omar late Sunday in the Shakai area of South Waziristan, they said.

"Commander Omar and 19 more people died in the strike, and three were injured," a security official said.

The attack demolished Omar's house and badly damaged two adjacent buildings.

Washington - Online scammers are out in full force these days. They'll try to dupe you by e-mail or through websites. And they typically want one of two things: your money or your personal information. To make sure you don't give them either, you need to keep abreast of some of the tricks they're using. Read on to learn about a few.

Q: I received an e-mail from what appears to be my credit card company. The e-mail says that my credit card was used in a number of fraudulent transactions, and a few were listed that do appear fraudulent. There's a Word attachment that the company wants me to fill out and return. Is this a scam?

Tokyo/Obama, Japan - Welcome to Obama. Elderly residents in the small port town on Japan's west coast are getting ready for the US presidential elections, playing hula music to support their hero - Barack Obama.

The vast majority of them knows the Hawaii-born senator only from the television screen. And, like most of their countrymen, they did not give a toss about politics at the other side of the Pacific Ocean until recently.

But now, the residents of Obama, Japan, are cheering for the Democratic candidate because he puts their town, 400 kilometres west of Tokyo, on the map.

San Francisco - If anyone still questioned the power of the internet to play a key role in the general elections, the recent fundraising figures touted by Barack Obama should put all doubts to rest.

The Democratic presidential nominee raised a staggering 150 million dollars in September - most of which came from small donors who gave less than 100 dollars each through Obama's website.

Moscow - John McCain's US presidential campaign begged at the enemy's door this week when a wayward letter reached the desk of Russia's UN envoy Vitaly Churkin in New York asking for a donation.

The Russians wouldn't spare a ruble for the Republican, and sent McCain a sardonic message saying that unlike the United States, the Russian government does "not finance political activity in foreign countries."

In fact, Russian officials aren't banking on either McCain or Democratic nominee Barack Obama mending relations upturned by Russia's recent war with US-ally Georgia.