Anti-government protesters toppled a statue of Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin in Ukraine's capital and attacked it with hammers on Sunday in a symbolic challenge to President Viktor Yanukovich and his plans for closer ties with Russia.

A crowd of around 400 people set fire to vehicles and clashed with police in the Indian district of Singapore late on Sunday after a man was hit and killed by a bus, the first major riot in the city-state for more than 40 years.

Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra dissolved parliament on Monday and called a snap election, but anti-government protest leaders pressed ahead with mass demonstrations seeking to install an unelected body to run the country.

A devastating fire ripped through a Bangladesh garment factory supplying major Western retailers, police and industry officials said on Friday, in a blaze set by workers angered over rumors of a colleague's death in police firing.

About 1,500 anti-government protesters forced their way into the compound of Thailand's army headquarters on Friday, the latest escalation in a city-wide demonstration seeking to topple Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.

China sent several fighter jets and an early warning aircraft into its new air defense zone over the East China Sea, state news agency Xinhua said on Friday, raising the stakes in a standoff with the United States, Japan and South Korea.

The Syrian National Coalition opposition group will attend the long-delayed "Geneva 2" talks in January aimed at ending the country's civil war, the group's president, Ahmad Jarba, said on Wednesday.

When Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott swept to power in September's general election, his promise of a foreign policy that was "more Jakarta than Geneva" raised hopes of new era of engagement with powerful Asian neighbors.

Thailand's embattled Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra on Thursday breezed through a no-confidence vote in parliament where her party holds a commanding majority, but faced mounting pressure from widening anti-government protests.

Italian center-right leader Silvio Berlusconi faces one of the heaviest blows of his 20-year political career on Wednesday when the Senate votes on stripping him of his seat in parliament over a conviction for tax fraud.

Two unarmed U.S. B-52 bombers on a training mission flew over disputed islands in the East China Sea without informing Beijing while Japan's main airlines also ignored Chinese authorities when their planes passed through a new airspace defense zo

Nepal's Maoist former rebels, trailing in last week's election, have called for an independent investigation into complaints of vote fraud, but they also signaled willingness to compromise to end political deadlock in the Himalayan nation.

Gunmen on a motorbike shot dead two Russian military instructors in the Yemeni capital on Tuesday, a Yemeni police source said.

Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai has refused to sign a security deal with the United States, the White House said, opening up the prospect of a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from the strife-torn nation next year.

Fierce fighting to the east of Damascus has killed more than 160 people in the past two days as Syrian rebels struggle to break a months-long blockade by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, activists said on Sunday.

China has launched a broad investigation into safety at oil and gas pipelines, state media reported on Monday, as the death toll from an explosion at a Sinopec pipeline last week rose to 52.

Iran on curbing its nuclear program but he and other global leaders now have tough work ahead turning an interim accord into a comprehensive agreement.

Thousands of people protested in Tokyo on Thursday against a proposed secrets act that critics say would stifle information on issues such as the Fukushima nuclear crisis.

An explosion at a Sinopec Corp oil pipeline early on Friday killed 22 people in east China's Qingdao city, state media reported.

President Hamid Karzai triggered uncertainty about a vital security pact with the United States on Thursday by saying it should not be signed until after Afghanistan's presidential election next April, prompting the White House to insist on a yea

Major powers resumed talks on Wednesday on a preliminary agreement to curb Iran's nuclear program with the United States warning it would be "very hard" to clinch a breakthrough deal this week and Tehran flagging "red lines".

The text of a security pact between the United States and Afghanistan that sets out a military blueprint once Washington starts pulling out its troops after 2014 is unfinished a day before thousands of Afghan elders were due to start debating it.

Indonesia's froze a broad range of cooperation with Australia on Wednesday after reports that its neighbor had tried to eavesdrop on mobile phone conversations of top Indonesian officials, taking relations to their lowest point in 14 years.

Syria's chemical weapons could be processed and destroyed out at sea, say sources familiar with discussions at the international body in charge of eliminating the toxic arsenal.

Iranian parliamentarians gathered signatures on Tuesday to demand that the government carry on enriching uranium to levels of 20 percent, a move that could complicate nuclear talks between Iran and world powers in Geneva this week.

The cost of rebuilding houses, schools, roads and bridges in typhoon-devastated central Philippines could reach 250 billion pesos ($5.8 billion), making it likely that the government will seek cheap loans from development agencies, a senior official

The leaders of Indonesia and Australia traded punches on Tuesday in a row over alleged spying by Canberra, with both sides refusing to back down in a growing rift between the two often uneasy neighbors.

Qatar's construction industry is rife with abuse of migrant workers who are "treated like cattle" and live in squalid accommodations, Amnesty International said on Sunday while calling on world soccer's governing body to help with t

The United Nations expressed fear on Monday that some Philippine islands hit by a giant typhoon have not been reached 10 days after disaster struck and President Benigno Aquino said the scale of suffering "tempted him to despair".

A Boeing 737 airliner crashed on Sunday in the Russian city of Kazan, killing all 50 people on board and spotlighting the poor safety record of regional airlines that ply internal routes across the world's largest nation.