A seal pup was found in a forest in eastern Sweden on Sunday almost six kilometers (four miles) from the closest body of open water, raising questions as to how it got there, Swedish media reported.

"A somewhat confused person called and said he was out walking in the woods where he had found a seal pup. I thought he was joking at first," Uppsala police inspector Henrik Pederson told news agency TT.

French President Francois Hollande has called on all parties in the Central African Republic "to remain calm and hold talks on a national unity government", after rebels seized control of the capital Bangui, his office said on Sunday.

Hollande noted the departure of President Francois Bozize, called on all parties to form a government in accordance with a peace deal reached in January, and asked "the armed groups to respect the population".

Members of Syrian President Bashar Assad's own Alawite sect gathered in Cairo on Sunday to announce their support for his overthrow in an unprecedented gathering.

The Alawites, joined by other minority representatives, said they wanted to disassociate their sect from Assad's brutal crackdown on the rebellion in which an estimated 70,000 people have been killed.

Scientists said Sunday they had found mutations in 26 genes that may cause Esophageal cancer, a breakthrough they hope will lead to new drugs for the deadly and increasingly frequent disease.

A team of experts in the United States unraveled the genetic code of tumor cells from 149 patients, which they compared to healthy cells to identify a mutation signature for esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC).

Leaders from the BRICS emerging nations are expected to launch a joint development bank to rival western-dominated institutions at a summit beginning Tuesday.

The grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and hosts South Africa will meet in Durban to set up an infrastructure-focused lender that would challenge seven decades of dominance by the World Bank.

A man identified by media as an Australian-Israeli Mossad agent and found hanged in a Tel Aviv jail had passed secrets to Hizbullah before his death, an influential German magazine reported Sunday.

News weekly Der Spiegel said Ben Zygier, a man known as "Prisoner X" who died in 2010 in an allegedly suicide-proof cell, had handed tips to Hizbullah that led to the arrest of at least two people spying for Israel.

Al-Qaida has named a replacement for Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, a key commander of its North African branch who was killed in fighting with French-led forces in northern Mali, Algerian TV reported on Sunday.

The appointment of Djamel Okacha, a 34-year-old Algerian also known as Yahia Aboul Hammam, still has to be approved by a meeting of the leadership of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, the head of Algeria's Ennahar TV, Mohamed Mokkedem, told Agence France Presse.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is to visit Qatar to discuss the proposed opening of a Taliban office there as a prelude to possible peace talks, the foreign ministry said Sunday.

Until earlier this year, Karzai rejected the idea of a Taliban office in Qatar because of fears that his government would be frozen out of any deal between the United States and the militants.

The Egyptian state prosecutor decided on Sunday to extradite to Libya two former regime officials wanted on charges of corruption, a judicial source told Agence France Presse.

Former Libyan ambassador Ali Maria and and Mohammed Ibrahim, the brother of senior Gadhafi-era official Ahmed Ibrahim, were arrested in Cairo on March 19 along with Moammar Gadhafi's cousin Ahmed Qaddaf al-Dam.

Associates of exiled Russian oligarch and Kremlin critic Boris Berezovsky, who was found dead Saturday, questioned claims that he had begged President Vladimir Putin for forgiveness, but said he had been depressed and perhaps suicidal.

Berezovsky, who helped Putin rise to power but then fled Russia as the new strongman cracked down on politically ambitious oligarchs, was found dead in his mansion near London on Saturday afternoon.