Iran's parliament strongly endorsed President Hassan Rouhani's diplomatic bid to dispel mistrust at the United Nations last week during a visit which ended with an historic phone call with President Barack Obama, Iranian media said.

South Korea showed off on Tuesday new missiles designed to target North Korea's artillery and long-range missiles and vowed to boost deterrence against its unpredictable neighbor.

Australian mining entrepreneur Clive Palmer on Tuesday edged closer to winning a seat in the national parliament, where his start-up Palmer United Party could pose major problems for new conservative Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant said on Tuesday that four tonnes of rainwater contaminated with low levels of radiation leaked during an operation to transfer the water between tank holding areas.

Political instability put Italy's bonds under heavy selling pressure on Monday after five ministers from former premier Silvio Berlusconi's party stepped down at the weekend, increasing the risk of new elections.

Car bombs exploded in several predominantly Shi'ite Muslim neighborhoods of Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 54 people and wounding dozens, police and medical sources said.

A man arrested on suspicion of being an Iranian spy appeared in an Israeli court on Monday and some Israeli analysts questioned the timing of the affair, suggesting it was being showcased as part of efforts to discredit Tehran's new opening to Wa

Interpol issued a wanted persons alert at Kenya's request on Thursday for a British woman who has been cited by British police as a possible suspect in the attack on a Nairobi shopping mall that killed at least 72 people.

Panama's Canal Authority slapped a fine on Thursday of up to $1 million on the owners of a North Korean ship seized in July for smuggling Cuban weapons under 10,000 tons of sugar.

Ending weeks of diplomatic deadlock, the United States and Russia agreed on Thursday on a U.N. Security Council draft resolution that would demand Syria give up its chemical arms, but does not threaten military force if it fails to comply.

Angela Merkel's best hope of saving her bold energy revolution may lie in a coalition with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), who could agree to modest cuts to costly incentives for green power which are, paradoxically, driving up energy pri

Russia is ready to help guard Syria's chemical weapons sites when President Bashar al-Assad's chemical arms stockpiles and factories are destroyed, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying on Thursday by news agencies.

Militants dressed in Indian army uniforms killed eight people in attacks on an Indian police station and army base near the Pakistan border on Thursday, triggering calls to cancel talks between the rival nations' leaders at the weekend.

U.S. President Barack Obama appealed to the United Nations on Tuesday to back tough consequences for Syria if it refuses to give up chemical weapons and urged Russia and Iran to end their support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The death toll from a powerful earthquake in Pakistan climbed to more than 230 on Wednesday after hundreds of mud houses collapsed on their inhabitants throughout the remote and thinly populated area, officials said.

When India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last visited the White House in 2009 he was feted at President Barack Obama's first state dinner, a star-studded affair that reflected the excitement about blooming ties between the two big democraci

Al Qaeda-linked fighters and a rival Syrian rebel group declared a truce on Friday after two days of clashes near the Turkish frontier in which the militant Islamists overran a border town, rebels said.

Iran is on course to develop a nuclear bomb within six months and time has run out for further negotiations, a senior Israeli minister said.

Egyptian security forces were hunting for supporters of deposed President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood on Friday after retaking control of a town near Cairo in a crackdown on Islamists.

Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif reiterated on Tuesday his country will free former Afghan Taliban No. 2, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, but that details of his release would be determined after he returned to Pakistan later this week.

Diplomats from five key nations kicked off talks on Tuesday on a Western-drafted U.N. Security Council resolution to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons even as France and Russia clashed over Moscow's insistence that Syrian President Bashar al

Philippine forces freed scores of civilian hostages on Tuesday as fighting subsided in a port city where hundreds of rogue Muslim guerrillas have been battling for more than a week.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington on September 30, an Israeli official said on Tuesday, for talks expected to focus on Iran's nuclear program.

The United States, Britain and France warned President Bashar al-Assad on Monday that there would be consequences if he failed to hand over Syria's chemical weapons, and said a U.N. report on the August 21 sarin gas attack left little doubt that

South Korean workers crossed into North Korea on Monday as the joint Kaesong industrial zone restarted operations five months after being shuttered by rising military tensions and threats of war.

The United States, France and Britain agreed on Monday to step up pressure on President Bashar al-Assad to stick to the terms of a deal under which Syria is to give up its huge arsenal of chemical weapons and avoid U.S. military strikes.

A date could be set soon for new talks with global powers over Tehran's nuclear program but Iran will not sacrifice its rights or interests for the sake of a solution to the dispute, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Friday.

Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri urged small-scale attacks inside the United States to "bleed America economically", adding he hoped eventually to see a more significant strike, according to the SITE monitoring service.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov agreed on Friday to push again for an international conference aimed at ending Syria's civil war.

America's top military officer General Martin Dempsey has already seen one Middle Eastern civil war. He is much more cautious about involvement in another.