Chinese state media demanded severe punishment on Thursday for those behind what China has said is a holy war aimed at Beijing, which it has blamed on Islamist militants from the restive Xinjiang region.

Sheikh Mansour Hamid al-Imara clutches his prayer beads and watches a huge new oil facility nearing completion across the road from his village, hoping that Russian operator Lukoil will offer his poor tribesmen a better way of life.

A suicide bomber blew himself up on Wednesday in the Tunisian resort of Sousse without causing other casualties, and police seized a would-be suicide bomber at the tomb of former President Habib Bourguiba, security sources said.

Four Frenchmen held hostage in the Sahara desert by al Qaeda-linked gunmen for three years left Niger on a French government plane on Wednesday morning.

Israel freed 26 Palestinian prisoners on Wednesday as part of U.S.-brokered peace efforts, but said it was pressing on with plans to build more homes for Jewish settlers, in an apparent move to appease hardliners.

An Islamist militant group is believed to be behind an attack on a rally by Indian Hindu nationalist politician Narendra Modi that killed six people and wounded more than 80, police said on Tuesday.

South Korea may struggle to cut its reliance on nuclear power, as a working group has suggested it do, because the country has no natural resources to fill its huge energy requirements, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Tuesday.

Chinese authorities suspect suicide attackers drove the vehicle that ploughed into pedestrians at Beijing's Tiananmen Square and set it on fire, killing five people including the three inside, sources told Reuters on Tuesday.

Three Chinese anti-graft activists who agitated for officials to disclose their assets went on trial on Monday in the first case of its kind, underscoring the limits of government tolerance of challenges to its authority.

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) recently tracked over 60 million calls in Spain in the space of a month, a Spanish newspaper said on Monday, citing a document which it said formed part of papers obtained from ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

A German newspaper said on Sunday that U.S. President Barack Obama knew his intelligence service was eavesdropping on Angela Merkel as long ago as 2010, contradicting reports that he had told the German leader he did not know.

The people of Madagascar voted on Friday in a presidential election they hope will bring a fresh start, four years after a coup on the Indian Ocean island undermined aid and investment.

Congo's M23 rebels clashed with government troops on Friday near the eastern city of Goma, a rebel leaders said, in the first heavy fighting in nearly two months.

North Korea repatriated six South Korean citizens at a heavily defended border crossing on Friday, South Korea's Ministry of Unification said, in a rare humanitarian gesture amid persistent tensions between Pyongyang and Seoul.

Supporters of deposed Islamist President Mohamed Mursi have called on Egyptians to hold mass protests on November 4, the day he goes on trial for inciting murder, raising the prospect of more bloodshed as the country's political crisis drags on.

Primark will make another compensation payment to victims of the Rana Plaza factory disaster in Bangladesh, the discount clothing chain said on Thursday, calling on other international brands to follow suit.

Germany's Foreign Minister has summoned the United States' ambassador to Germany, John B. Emerson, to discuss information obtained by Berlin that the U.S. may have monitored Angela Merkel's mobile phone, a government spokesman said on Thu

Political cartoonist Wang Liming has spent three years publishing caricatures skewering China's leaders and is no stranger to the country's police. But it was a microblog post that got him into trouble last week.

Upset at President Barack Obama's policies on Iran and Syria, members of Saudi Arabia's ruling family are threatening a rift with the United States that could take the alliance between Washington and the kingdom to its lowest point in years.

China and India signed a deal on Wednesday aimed at soothing tension on their contested border, as the two nuclear-armed giants try to break a decades-old stalemate on overlapping claims to long remote stretches of the Himalayas.

Oil-rich Brunei will enforce sharia criminal law next year, the Islamic kingdom's sultan announced on Tuesday, with possible punishments including stoning to death for adultery and flogging for drinking alcohol.

China has no intention of altering its "correct" policies in the restive region of Tibet as they have brought unprecedented achievements, a government white paper said on Tuesday, slamming the romanticized notion Tibet was once an idyllic f

Kurdish rebels are ready to re-enter Turkey from northern Iraq, the head of the group's political wing said at his mountain hideout, threatening to rekindle an insurgency unless Ankara resuscitates their peace process soon.

Mexico scolded the United States on Sunday over new allegations of spying after a German magazine reported that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) had hacked Felipe Calderon's public email account while he was president.

The United States has quietly restarted security assistance to Pakistan, U.S. officials said on Sunday, after freezing much of that aid during a period of strained relations beginning with the 2011 Navy SEAL raid that killed al Qaeda chief Osama bin

Choking smog all but shut down one of northeastern China's largest cities on Monday, forcing schools to suspended classes, snarling traffic and closing the airport, in the country's first major air pollution crisis of the winter.

India's opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has picked up support since naming Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi as its candidate for prime minister last month, but would need allies to form a government, two new opinion polls show.

The world's chemical weapons watchdog is confident it will be able to meet deadlines to destroy Syria's toxic stockpile even though some sites are in disputed or rebel-held territory, a special adviser to the organization's director gener

The rise of al Qaeda in parts of Syria's north has left Turkey facing a new security threat on its already vulnerable border and raised questions about its wholesale support for rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad.

Germany's Greens ruled out any further coalition talks with Angela Merkel's conservatives early on Wednesday, leaving the chancellor to focus on discussions with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) in her efforts to form a new government.