European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton met kicked off her second day official visit to Beirut by meeting with President Michel Suleiman at the Baabda Palace.

Ashton reportedly canceled her scheduled meetings with Prime Minister-designate Tammam Salam and Caretaker Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour to visit UNIFIL headquarters in Naqoura instead.

Ethiopia and Egypt have agreed to hold further talks on the impact of an Ethiopian dam to quell tensions between the two countries, the foreign ministers of both nations said Tuesday.

"We agreed that we will start immediately on consultations at both the technical level... and the political level," Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr told reporters, after meetings in Addis Ababa with his Ethiopian counterpart Tedros Adhanom.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Beijing on Tuesday for high-level talks with Chinese officials on North Korea, Syria and other issues, his spokesman said.

Ban will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and senior foreign policy officials during his stay, spokesman Martin Nesirky said.

North Korea, one of the world's most repressive societies, branded the United States a "kingpin" of human rights abuses Tuesday, following revelations of the U.S. government's Internet surveillance program.

A bylined commentary in the government's official Minju Joson newspaper said U.S. National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden had exposed the global nature of the NSA's intrusive monitoring activities.

As Shimon Peres turns 90, the indefatigable Israeli president is doing what he has always done: looking ahead, preparing for the next challenge and believing that he will see Middle East peace in his lifetime.

Old age has hardly slowed him down. If anything, it seems to have handed Peres a measure of the grace that eluded him as a younger man. And at a time when Israel is widely criticized for its ongoing occupation and continued settlement of war-won land, he operates as something of a one-man reminder that the country once aimed — in its 1948 Declaration of Independence — to be a "light unto the nations."

Communist insurgents wearing military uniforms abducted five soldiers in the southern Philippines, in the latest of a series of violent acts following the collapse of peace talks, authorities said Tuesday.

The New People's Army guerrillas set up a roadblock on the outskirts of Davao City on Monday and seized the five soldiers as they were passing through on motorcycles, said military spokesman Colonel Ramon Zagala.

President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday announced the transfer of nationwide security from NATO to Afghan control, a major milestone as the U.S.-led war effort winds down after 12 years.

Shortly before Karzai's speech at a handover ceremony, the location of which had been kept a secret, a prominent lawmaker escaped a bomb attack in Kabul that killed three civilians, underlining the country's continuing instability.

Caretaker Energy Minister Jebran Bassil expressed regret on Tuesday that Hizbullah's “anti-democratic” move in supporting the extension of parliament's mandate had harmed the Free Patriotic Movement.

In an interview published in pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat, Bassil, who is an FPM official, said Hizbullah “stabbed democracy” and “harmed us with its knife along with harming democracy.”

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi demanded on Tuesday the formation of a neutral cabinet to bridge the gap between the March 8 and 14 alliances and achieve reconciliation.

“The March 8 and 14 coalitions sit on one table to save the country,” al-Rahi told reporters at Beirut Rafik Hariri International Airport before heading to the Vatican.

A Jordanian with alleged an extremist jihadist group has admitted to the Lebanese Army intelligence that he provided military assistance to Syrian armed groups via Lebanon.

According to al-Akhbar newspaper, 43-year-old Mahmoud S. was detained 10 days ago in in the Bekaa district of Baalbek in his possession a fake identification card for a Palestinian man called Ahmed Hujeir.