Taliban negotiators have begun meeting with U.S. officials in Qatar, where they are discussing preliminary trust-building measures aimed at ending the war in Afghanistan, The New York Times reported Sunday.

Citing several former Taliban officials, the newspaper said these measures included a possible prisoner transfer.

Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is due to step down next month, arrived Saturday in the United States on a politically sensitive visit to seek medical treatment for wounds inflicted in a bombing.

The embattled leader flew from Oman to the United States with a brief refueling stop at Stansted Airport outside London, ending days of speculation about whether or when he would make the trip.

European and Arab U.N. members on Saturday started rewriting a proposed Security Council resolution condemning Syria's deadly crackdown on dissent after the Arab League suspended its monitoring mission in Syria.

European countries said the withdrawal highlighted the need for U.N. action. France's foreign minister contacted his Russia counterpart in a bid to overcome Moscow's resistance to the draft resolution officially presented on Friday, diplomats said.

Libya's ruling National Transitional Council said it adopted on Saturday a new electoral law on the basis of which the North African country will form its first constituent assembly in June.

The law, announced on the NTC's Facebook page, scraps a draft proposal that would have reserved 10 percent of seats on the 200-member General National Congress for women, in a move criticized by women's and rights groups.

Pakistan's prime minister said on Saturday there was "a trust deficit" between Islamabad and Washington as he criticized the resumption of U.S. drone strikes on his country's tribal belt.

Speaking the day after over 100,000 people massed in Karachi to protest the strikes, Yousuf Raza Gilani said they only served to bolster militants.

A delegation from an opposition Iranian student group met Israel's centrist opposition leader and former foreign minister Tzipi Livni in Tel Aviv on Saturday.

An Agence France Presse photographer said the Confederation of Iranian Students delegation was headed by its secretary general, Amir Abbas Fakhravar, who said he was "happy to be in Israel, the only democracy in the region."

Dozens of Libyans protested Saturday against Defense Minister Osama Juili's visit to an ex-bastion of Moammar Gadhafi, saying it showed support from the nation's new rulers to the slain dictator's diehards.

"Don't trade with the blood of martyrs for the sake of elections!" shouted angry protesters demonstrating in Tripoli against Juili's visit on Wednesday to Bani Walid after deadly clashes there killed seven people.

A fire in a drug rehabilitation center in a densely populated area of Lima Saturday has killed at least 26 people and injured 12 others, authorities said.

Antonio Zavala, the commandant of the fire department, said the blaze broke out on the first floor of the center when a patient's mattress caught fire.

The head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog said the agency will open a branch office in Fukushima to monitor efforts to contain the world's worst atomic energy accident since Chernobyl, a report said Saturday.

The government has struggled with public trust over the nuclear energy issue since the March 11 disaster and had asked the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to open an office, which will help share information on the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

Mohammed Qasim, a 58-year-old butcher, is traumatized, depressed and anxious -- like 50 percent of his fellow Afghans after 30 years of war, according to government figures.

Qasim saw his wife, daughter-in-law and two grandsons aged five and six die in a horrific suicide bombing in Kabul last month.