Swedish prosecutors said Tuesday it is "far-fetched" to think that fugitive Wikileaks founder Julian Assange could be extradited to the United States if he returned to Sweden.

It was the first time that Swedish prosecutors, who want to question the 43-year-old Australian on allegations of rape and sexual molestation, commented on the likelihood that he could be sent to the United States.

Conservative bashing, stirring words about social equality and warnings over populism: Britain's main opposition party this week prepped its ranks for next year's general election.

"Win 2015" flags were on display all around at the party conference in Manchester, northwest England, as hundreds of supporters milled around, along with T-shirts reading "Never Kissed A Tory". (Tory is another name for the Conservatives.)

Gunmen in southern Pakistan shot dead a doctor from Pakistan's Ahmadi Muslim minority, police and members of the community said Tuesday, in the latest attack on one of the country's most persecuted groups.

The assailants stormed Mubashar Ahmad Khosa's clinic in the city of Mirpur Khas, which is around 230 km (140 miles) northeast of Karachi, on Monday evening.

Pope Francis on Tuesday said "mere tolerance" toward migrants and asylum seekers is not enough and he called for a "globalization of charity" towards those fleeing warzones and poverty.

"It is necessary to respond to the globalization of migration with the globalization of charity and cooperation, in such a way as to make the conditions of migrants more humane," the pontiff said in a message to mark the World Day of Migrants and Refugees next January.

Poland kicks off major military exercises involving eight NATO partners on Wednesday amid the West's worst standoff with Russia since the end of the Cold War sparked by differences over the Ukraine crisis.

Organized every two years since 2006, this year's Anaconda maneuvers involve 12,500 soldiers, with 750 from NATO members the U.S. and Britain among others, the Polish defense ministry said, adding the event "has become a permanent training element of the North Atlantic alliance".

British Prime Minister David Cameron is to hold talks with Iran's President Hassan Rouhani over unrest in Iraq and Syria, officials said Tuesday, the first meeting between the country's leaders since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The talks at the U.N. General Assembly in New York come as Western powers seek to build support for the fight against the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group, which holds swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria and has beheaded two U.S. journalists plus a British aid worker.

The United States said Tuesday it halting the use of anti-personnel mines apart from in the tense No Man's Land between the Koreas, a step closer to compliance with a global convention.

On the 20th anniversary of then president Bill Clinton's pledge to back the eventual elimination such weapons, Barack Obama's administration said it was "aligning its policy" on anti-personnel landmines (APLs) with the Ottawa Convention.

Outgoing Afghan President Hamid Karzai used his farewell speech on Tuesday to take a parting shot at the United States, accusing Washington of waging a war against Taliban insurgents for its own ends.

Karzai rose to power with American support in 2001 after the ousting of the Taliban regime, but he has often criticized the U.S. military campaign that has struggled to defeat the Islamist insurgency that engulfed the country.

The prime minister of the self-proclaimed People's Republic of Donetsk said Tuesday that the pro-Russian rebels have removed artillery from frontline areas where Ukraine had also withdrawn, in line with a peace plan signed Saturday.

"We have withdrawn artillery but only in those areas where the Ukrainian regular units have done the same. Where Ukraine hasn't withdrawn artillery, we also haven't done so," the rebel leader, Alexander Zakharchenko told the Interfax news agency. 

Nepal must scrap a 35-day time limit for reporting rapes that prevents victims from seeking justice, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday in a report on wartime sexual violence in the Himalayan nation.

Both sides in Nepal's 1996-2006 civil war between Maoist guerrillas and the state were accused of serious human rights violations including rape, but no one has yet been prosecuted.