A black-clad man fired into a lecture hall packed with students at an Illinois university on Thursday, killing five people and wounding 18 before shooting himself dead, police and college officials said.

The gunman, who police said had a shotgun and two handguns, stepped onto the lecturer's stage near the end of a mid-afternoon geology class at Northern Illinois University and began shooting down the room, sending terrified and bleeding students fleeing, witnesses said. He then shot himself on the same stage.

Police on the 25,000-student college 65 miles west of Chicago said the gunman was a former student but they did not publicly identify him and said they did not know the motive in the latest in a series of shootings at U.S. colleges and high schools.

At least 100 passengers are feared dead after a boat sank on Lake Tanganyika, off the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The vessel was travelling from the town of Kalemie, in the south-east, to Moba at the time.

Few details are known, but a Congolese maritime official said there were not thought to be any survivors. Thirteen bodies have so far been recovered.

A gunman has opened fire in a shopping centre in the US state of Nebraska, killing eight people before fatally shooting himself, police say.

A further five people were wounded - two critically - in the shooting at the Westroads Mall in Omaha.

Police have identified the gunman as Robert Hawkins, 19, from Bellevue, close to Omaha. They said a suicide note had been recovered.

Hawkins struck as the centre was crowded with Christmas shoppers.

Witnesses spoke of shoppers screaming and scrambling to find safe shelter as the gunman struck.

In a statement, President George W Bush - who visited Omaha earlier in the day for a fundraiser - said he was "deeply saddened" by the shootings.

Westroads Mall says it is the largest shopping centre in Nebraska, with more than 135 shops and restaurants.

A UK teacher has been released and handed over to British officials in Sudan after being jailed for letting her class name a teddy bear Muhammad.

Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, was freed after eight days in custody. She had been given a 15-day jail term.

Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir pardoned her after talks with two British Muslim peers.

In a statement, Mrs Gibbons apologised for "any distress". UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was "delighted".

Mother-of-two Mrs Gibbons has been released into the care of the British embassy in Khartoum, but her exact location has not been disclosed.

She was released four days after receiving a 15-day sentence for insulting religion.

Slovak and Hungarian police seized a kilo (2.2 lbs) of radioactive material and arrested three people in a joint operation on Wednesday, a spokesman said.

Slovak police spokesman Martin Korch said the material was being examined and did not confirm a report carried by the Slovak news agency SITA that it was enriched uranium.

"This one kilogram should have been sold for one million U.S. dollars," Korch said.

Uranium enrichment can yield fuel for nuclear power stations or be used to make nuclear warheads. Uranium must be highly enriched to be suitable for use in weapons.

A severe cyclone has killed more than 580 people in Bangladesh and left thousands injured or missing, triggering an international relief effort on Friday to help the disaster-prone country cope with its latest emergency.

Local officials and Red Crescent workers said 587 deaths had been confirmed. Hundreds more were injured or missing after Cyclone Sidr struck overnight packing winds of 250 kph (155 mph).

The Category 4 cyclone triggered a 15-foot (5-metre) high tidal surge that devastated three coastal towns and forced 3.2 million people to evacuate, officials and aid agencies said.

Separation surgery on a two-year-old Indian girl who was born with four arms and four legs has been successful, doctors say.

Lakshmi Tatma was joined at the pelvis to what was, in effect, a headless, undeveloped twin.

A team of surgeons in the southern city of Bangalore operated on Lakshmi for 27 hours to separate her spinal column and kidney from that of her twin.

It is hoped the procedure will allow her to survive beyond adolescence.

"Lakshmi is stable and sound," the doctor leading the operation, Sharan Patil, told a news conference which was shown live on television channels across India.

India's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, has bought his wife a luxury jet with entertainment cabins, a sky bar and fancy showers for her birthday, a newspaper said on Friday.

Ambani, who owns the country's biggest private company, Reliance Industries Ltd, gifted the $60 million Airbus plane to wife Neeta on her 44th birthday on Thursday, the Mumbai Mirror newspaper said.

The jet is custom-fitted with an office and a cabin with game consoles, music systems, satellite television and wireless communication, the report said.

Firefighters gained the upper hand on nearly all of the California wildfires on Thursday as winds died down after five days battling 20 fires from the mountains north of Los Angeles down to the Mexican border.

Most of the 500,000 people in the largest evacuation in California's modern history were on their way home, officials said. Some 1,600 homes have been destroyed since Sunday.

Two burned bodies were found in a house in hard-hit San Diego County, bringing the death toll to at least eight. Most were elderly who died while being evacuated.

"This is a better day than any we've had since this thing started," San Diego County Sheriff Bill Kolender said.

A bomb killed a child and wounded 13 others in a playground as they celebrated the Islamic festival of Eid on Friday in the northern Iraqi town of Tuz Khurmato, police said.

Police Colonel Abbas Mohammed said a would-be suicide bomber hid the explosives in a cart he was pushing that was filled with children's toys. The bomber was wounded and is in hospital.

The predominantly Shi'ite Turkmen town of Tuz Khurmato lies about 180 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad.