Several international flights to and from the resort island of Bali were cancelled or diverted Thursday to avoid dangerous ash spewing from an Indonesian volcano, officials said.

Ash from rumbling Mount Bromo, a popular attraction in East Java province, had spread to the island popular with foreign tourists and surfers.

An explosion likely caused by a methane gas buildup ripped through an underground coal mine in Colombia during a shift change Wednesday, killing 21 workers, officials said. A similar fatal blast occurred at the same mine four years ago.

Five of the victims died at the mine's entrance and by afternoon two bodies had been removed from the mine with another 14 left to recover, said the provincial Colombian Red Cross director, Johel Enrique Rodriguez.

Russia's upper house of parliament Wednesday ratified the new U.S. nuclear disarmament treaty, the final step in approving the first nuclear pact between the two former Cold War foes in 20 years.

All 137 senators in the Federation Council upper house approved the new START treaty, which U.S. President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev signed in Prague on April 8, 2010.

Pleading for unity in a newly divided government, President Barack Obama implored Democratic and Republican lawmakers to rally behind his vision of economic revival for an anxious nation, declaring in his State of the Union address Tuesday night: "We will move forward together or not at all."

The president unveiled an agenda of carefully balanced political goals: a burst of spending on education, research, technology and transportation to make the nation more competitive, alongside pledges, in the strongest terms of his presidency, to cut the deficit and smack down spending deemed wasteful to America. Yet he never explained how he'd pull that off or what specifically would be cut.

At least four people were killed and 15 injured when a bomb exploded on a crowded bus in the Philippine capital's financial district on Tuesday, authorities said.

The attack occurred two months after the United States and several other Western governments warned a terrorist attack in Manila was imminent, and followed a bus hijacking last year that left eight Hong Kong tourists dead.

British fighter jets escorted an Etihad airlines jet to land at London's Stansted airport on Monday after it was diverted because of a passenger making threats, officials said.

A 37-year-old British national was arrested after the flight bound for London's Heathrow Airport from Abu Dhabi landed, but the incident was not believed to be terrorism-related, said police.

President Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday that clear breaches in security had allowed a suspected female suicide bomber linked to Russia's Northern Caucasus to slaughter 35 people at Moscow's main airport.

In comments broadcast on national television, Medvedev demanded answers from Domodedovo airport over how it let the bomber wander into arrivals and set off a charge just as passengers from several international flights were arriving.

A suicide bomber killed at least 35 people and wounded over 130 in the packed arrivals hall of Moscow's largest airport in an attack slammed by the Kremlin and the world as an act of terror.

There were scenes of carnage at Domodedovo airport in southern Moscow Monday as corpses were stretchered out of the smoke-filled arrivals area after the blast, the latest deadly attack in the capital after the March metro bombings.

A suspected suicide bombing Monday killed at least 31 people and wounded over 100 at Moscow's Domodedovo international airport in an attack described by investigators as an act of terror.

Eyewitnesses who spoke to Russian radio described a scene of carnage after the blast ripped through the baggage claims section of the arrivals hall at Russia's largest airport.

Surging floodwaters broke levees in disaster-hit Australia on Monday to inundate more properties in the southeast, as residents sandbagged homes against the spiraling crisis.

Swollen rivers in the southeastern state of Victoria have created a flood zone measuring an estimated 90 kilometers (56 miles) long and 40 kilometers wide, the State Emergency Service said.