A top-ranking North Korean military official has threatened a nuclear strike on the White House and Pentagon after accusing Washington of raising military tensions on the Korean peninsula.

The threat came from Hwang Pyong-So, director of the military's General Political Bureau, during a speech to a large military rally in Pyongyang Sunday on the anniversary of the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.

Flags flew at half-mast in France Monday in mourning for the 118 victims of the Air Algerie plane tragedy, as investigators waited for the black boxes from the crash to arrive.

Thousands of kilometers away on the remote desert site of the accident in Mali, experts were sifting through the remains of the aircraft to try and determine why it plunged to the ground with such force that it completely disintegrated.

The downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 "may amount to a war crime,” the U.N. said Monday, adding that fighting in east Ukraine has claimed over 1,100 lives with both government and rebel forces using heavy weaponry in built-up areas.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay condemned the "horrendous shooting down" of the Malaysian passenger jet in rebel-held territory that killed all 298 people on board, and demanded a "thorough, effective, independent and impartial investigation".

A 20-year-old man died after lightning struck or shook up 14 people at a popular Los Angeles beach and a golf course, a coroner's official said Sunday.

Los Angeles County coroner's Lt. Larry Dietz said the man was taken from Venice Beach and pronounced dead at a hospital.

Sixteen people, including children, were killed when Islamic militants opened fire on two vehicles in a remote southern Philippine town on Monday, the military said.

Abu Sayyaf gunmen opened fire on the vehicles in Talipao town before dawn in what appeared to be an ambush related to a clan feud, said local marine commander Brigadier-General Martin Pinto.

A father was killed and his 9-year-old daughter seriously injured Sunday while walking along a Florida beach when a small plane crash landed and struck them, authorities said.

Wendy Rose, a spokeswoman for the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office, said the pilot and his passenger weren't hurt when the Piper aircraft lost power and touched down next to the water's edge.

A Venezuelan ex-military intelligence chief arrested by Aruba at the United States' request on drug trafficking charges was freed Sunday and quickly returned home to Caracas, authorities said.

Retired major general Hugo Carvajal had been detained Wednesday on the southern Caribbean island, where he had been designated but not confirmed as Venezuela's consul. 

Thousands of people protested in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam on Sunday against what some labeled Israel's "genocide" in Gaza, media reported.

State broadcaster NOS said as many as 10,000 people took part in the demonstration against Israel's offensive in Gaza, with marchers waving posters reading: "Free Palestine" and "No Dutch support for Palestinian genocide."

The United States on Sunday released satellite images to bolster its claim that Russian artillery has fired across the border into Ukraine, targeting government forces in support of separatist rebels.

The four images, prepared by the office of the Director of National Intelligence and forwarded to reporters by the State Department, show sections of the Russia-Ukraine frontier.

The first group of 157 asylum-seekers who attempted to enter Australia by boat arrived on the country's mainland Sunday, after being held at sea for weeks.

Eighty-one asylum-seekers arrived at the remote Curtin Immigration Detention Center in Western Australia, a spokesman for the facility said, after they were reportedly flown there by the government from the remote atoll of Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean.