A Massachusetts man who wanted to quickly melt ice on a porch using a blowtorch instead has set a four-storey house on fire partly damaging it.

No one was injured from Monday's blaze that started when the flame on Vasco Silva's blowtorch ignited the vinyl siding on the back of his house in New Bedford and the flame quickly spread up to the third floor.

More than 100 people were trapped for over six hours in the world's tallest Ferris Wheel on Tuesday after a short circuit or fire reportedly damaged the wheel's control room causing the Singapore Flyer to grind to a halt.

Power was finally restored after more than six hours.

An international naval force has prevented the hijacking of a Chinese vessel in the Gulf of Aden by driving away pirates with helicopter gunfire.

All 30 crew members of the MV Zhen Hua-4 owned by the China Communications Construction Co. were not harmed during Tuesday's hijacking attempt as they locked themselves inside cabins and from there radioed for help. The 10 pirates fled uninjured.

An Indian lawyer has asked the Mumbai High Court to totally ban Google Earth claiming that terrorists who attacked the financial center last month used maps freely available from the satellite imaging website.

In his petition filed on Monday, Amit Karkhanis also sought a complete ban on similar sites, including the online map website Wikimapia, in the interest of national security.

The nature of the recession and the long-term shift in the American economy has caused more men to lose than jobs than women. According to the Labor Department, 1.1 million males lost their jobs the past 12 months while 12,000 women found employment during the same period.

Males comprise 70 percent of the employees in the manufacturing sector which lost 500,000 jobs the past year. The construction industry which has a 90 percent male pool, shed 500,000 jobs while investment companies which is 60 percent male-dominated, lost 9,000 jobs. In contrast, the healthcare sector, in which females comprise 80 percent of its work force, added over 400,000 jobs during the same time.