Indonesian prosecutors on Monday asked for a life sentence rather than the death penalty for Umar Patek, the bombmaker accused of being behind the Bali attacks that killed 202 people.

When the trial started in February prosecutors had said they would seek capital punishment for Patek, who was held last year in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad, four months before al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden was killed there.

The head of the U.N.'s nuclear surveillance agency pressed Iran over inspections during a visit to Tehran on Monday that was being closely watched ahead of wider nuclear talks between Iran and world powers later this week.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano said as he left on the trip he was to have "direct talks with high officials of Iran" to build on "good progress" made last week between IAEA and Iranian officials in Vienna.

Protesters clashed with riot police Sunday as an anti-NATO protest turned ugly in Chicago when a few hundred demonstrators demanding an end to war ignored orders to clear the streets.

As NATO leaders held talks focused on Afghanistan, officials said an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 people marched in the city, but later some protesters faced off with baton-wielding police.

Two NATO soldiers were killed in an attack in Afghanistan Sunday as alliance leaders gathered in Chicago for a summit dominated by plans to pull troops out of the Afghan war.

Two children also died and several civilians were wounded as a suicide bomber targeted a NATO convoy in Tirin Kot, capital of southern Uruzgan province, Afghan police said.

Japan was hit by two shallow earthquakes in the space of just eight minutes on Sunday, one of them measuring a strong 6.2-magnitude, but there were no reports of damage and no tsunami alert.

The 6.2-magnitude quake struck at 4:20pm (0720 GMT) off Japan's northeast Pacific coast, the national meteorological agency said, followed by a tremor with a reading of 5.7 at 4:28pm.

Flash floods triggered by torrential rains in northern Afghanistan killed at least 19 people and left thousands homeless, an official said on Sunday.

Another 56 people were missing after the flood hit on Saturday in Sayyad and Share Naw districts of Sari Pul province, the provincial governor Abdul Jabar Haqbeen told AFP.

Sri Lanka's president has ordered the release of his jailed electoral rival, ex-army chief Sarath Fonseka, bowing to U.S.-led international pressure three years after the end of the island's long ethnic war.

The 61-year-old former four-star general could leave prison on Monday following legal formalities, an official said Sunday, after President Mahinda Rajapakse marked the third anniversary of the Tamil Tigers' crushing defeat.

Voters across Serbia headed to the polls Sunday to elect a new president in a run-off with the incumbent pro-European Boris Tadic set for a victory over nationalist challenger Tomislav Nikolic.

Surveys published just ahead of the final round of the presidential election showed Tadic, 54, leading with 58 percent, while Nikolic had 42 percent.

A powerful earthquake shook Italy's industrial and densely populated northeast early Sunday, killing at least six people, felling homes and factories and toppling church steeples.

Emergency services said dozens had been injured in the magnitude 6.0 quake, which struck in the middle of the night, sending thousands of people running into the streets in towns and cities across the Emilia Romagna region.

Talks between NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari were canceled Saturday as Islamabad appeared headed for a clash with the U.S. over reopening Afghan supply routes.

Both NATO and Pakistani officials insisted to AFP that the last-minute delay in the planned meeting in Chicago was due to the late arrival of Zardari's flight from London.