Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Wednesday he hoped that a U.S. promise to pursue diplomacy to remove the threat of chemical weapons in Syria was "serious", the state news agency IRNA reported.

A judge will deliver his sentence on Friday against four men convicted of killing a woman they gang-raped and tortured on a bus in New Delhi, a case that triggered outrage in India and widespread demands for the guilty to be hanged.

Syria accepted a Russian proposal on Tuesday to give up chemical weapons but U.S. President Barack Obama said it was too early to tell if the initiative would succeed and he vowed to keep military forces at the ready to strike if diplomacy fails.

The European Union must hand back some powers to nation states while strengthening its role in other areas if it is to regain public trust and reverse a tide of skepticism in countries like Britain, the president of the European Parliament said.

France is to put forward a U.N. Security Council draft resolution for Syria to give up its chemical weapons, quickly turning a Russian idea into a full-blown diplomatic proposal that could avert Western military strikes.

Four men were found guilty on Tuesday of the fatal gang-rape of a young woman on a bus in New Delhi, a crime that shook India to its core and forced Indians to confront the issue of rampant sexual violence in a society undergoing wrenching change.

An al Qaeda affiliate has claimed responsibility for a series of car bombs that killed around 60 people in predominantly Shi'ite districts of the Iraqi capital last week.

Muslim rebels took 30 civilian hostages in the southern Philippines on Monday and held security forces in a standoff as part of a drive to derail peace talks, officials said.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad denied that he was behind a chemical weapons attack on the Syrian people, as the White House on Sunday pressed ahead with the uphill effort of persuading Congress to approve a military strike to punish Assad.

South Korea banned all fishery imports from a swath of Japan around the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant on Friday, dealing another blow to Tokyo's credibility on the eve of the capital's bid to host the Olympics.

For the first time in at least three years, European leaders have found themselves out of the economic firing line at a Group of 20 summit, with emerging nations' troubles taking the spotlight.

U.S. President Barack Obama faced growing pressure from Russia's Vladimir Putin and other world leaders on Thursday to decide against launching military strikes in Syria, which many of them fear would hurt the global economy and push up oil price

Egypt's interior minister survived an assassination attempt on Thursday when a bomb blew up as his convoy drove through Cairo's Nasr City district, state media and security officials said.

Iran's most powerful authority, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the United States was using a chemical attack in Syria as a pretext to interfere in the country and warned it would suffer loss from its intervention, Mehr news agency reported on Thurs

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia did not rule out approving a military operation in Syria if clear evidence showed Damascus had carried out chemical weapons attacks, but said any attack would be illegal without U.N. support.

Gunmen shot dead 16 members of the same Shi'ite family before blowing up their two neighboring homes south of the Iraqi capital overnight, police and medics said.

President Barack Obama won the backing of key figures in the U.S. Congress, including Republicans, in his call for limited U.S. strikes on Syria to punish President Bashar al-Assad for his suspected use of chemical weapons against civilians.

Russian radar detected the launch of two ballistic "objects" towards the eastern Mediterranean from the central part of the sea on Tuesday, Russian news agencies quoted the Defence Ministry as saying.

The Philippines accused China on Tuesday of violating an informal code of conduct in the South China Sea by planning new structures on a disputed shoal, as China's premier told Southeast Asian leaders Beijing was serious about peace.

President Barack Obama's efforts to persuade the U.S. Congress to back his plan to attack Syria were met with skepticism on Monday from lawmakers in his own Democratic Party who expressed concern the United States would be dragged into a new Midd

British soldiers start testifying on Monday at a public inquiry in London into allegations that they tortured and executed Iraqis in an episode which, if confirmed by the investigation, would go down as one of the worst atrocities of the Iraq war.

Japan vowed quick, decisive action, including the use of public funds, to tackle the worsening problem of contaminated water pouring from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant, as the authorities step in to help the facility's embattled operator.

Syria has asked the United Nations to prevent "any aggression" against Syria following a call over the weekend by U.S. President Barack Obama for punitive strikes against the Syrian military for last month's chemical weapons attack.

China said there should be no rush to force U.N. Security Council action against Syria until a probe by U.N. experts into suspected chemical weapons use is complete.

Prime Minister David Cameron said on Friday he regretted the failure of the British parliament to support military action in Syria but that he hoped President Barack Obama would understand the need to listen to the wishes of the people.

France said on Friday it still backed action to punish Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government for an apparent poison gas attack on civilians, despite a British parliamentary vote against it.

U.N. inspectors, in Syria to determine whether forces have used chemical weapons in the civil war, will continue their investigations until Friday and plans to leave by Saturday morning, the U.N. chief said.

China has asked Philippine President Benigno Aquino to postpone a visit next week for the opening of a trade fair, Manila said on Thursday, an unprecedented snub by Beijing as relations sour over territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

President Barack Obama made the case on Wednesday for a limited military strike against Syria in response to last week's chemical weapons attack even as he faced new obstacles with British allies and U.S. lawmakers that could delay any imminent a

Britain's national security will be undermined if it fails to challenge the Syrian government over the use of chemical weapons against its own people, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Wednesday.