A bomb blast and gunfire shook an area around an Islamic boarding school in northern Nigeria on Sunday, leaving two of the alleged attackers dead and others wounded, emergency officials said.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the blast in the city of Zaria, but Islamist extremist group Boko Haram has been blamed for hundreds of deaths as part of its insurgency in northern and central Nigeria.

Hundreds of Taiwanese rallied Sunday to press Taipei's claim over disputed East China Sea islands at the center of a major row between China and Japan.

Nearly 1,000 people marched through the town of Toucheng, in northeastern Ilan county, clutching banners and flags and chanting slogans.

British experts have arrived in Nepal to investigate the plane crash that killed 19 people including seven Britons heading to the Mount Everest region for a trekking holiday, the government said Sunday.

Nepal's aviation ministry said two staff from the Air Accident Investigation Branch had come to Kathmandu to assist local authorities looking into the accident, which also killed four Chinese, an American and seven locals.

Thousands of rioters torched Buddhist temples and homes in southeastern Bangladesh Sunday over a photo posted on Facebook deemed offensive to Islam, in a rare attack against the community.

Officials said the mob comprising some 25,000 people set fire to at least five Buddhist temples and dozens of homes in Ramu town and its adjoining villages, some 350 kilometers (216 miles) from the capital Dhaka.

A senior NATO commander says that 80 percent of Afghanistan is free of violence but warned an insurgency still rages in the south and east, fueled by fighters coming from neighboring Pakistan.

"About 80 percent of Afghan territory and the Afghan population is not affected by security problems or violence," Lieutenant General Olivier de Bavinchove told AFP in an interview.

Myanmar leader Thein Sein has said in an interview he would accept democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi as president if elected, but added he could not alone amend rules that bar her from power.

Former general Thein Sein has paid rare tributes to Myanmar's Nobel laureate during a landmark tour of the United States where he has burnished his reformist credentials by insisting his country will continue its strides towards democracy after decades of army rule.

After breezing through past elections, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez entered the last week of campaigning Sunday against a rival who has gained ground in opinion polls.

The leftist leader, in power for almost 14 years, is vying for a fourth term in office that would extend his presidency by another six years, but opposition candidate Henrique Capriles hopes to pull a major upset on October 7.

White House hopeful Mitt Romney renewed his attacks on Barack Obama's foreign policies Saturday, blaming the president's "passivity and denial" for sewing chaos in the Middle East.

The Republican nominee took Obama to task for saying unrest and violence were "bumps in the road," adding that such a "casual assessment of shocking events reveals that the president really doesn't understand the gravity of the challenges that we face in the broader Middle East."

Jailed ex-premier Yulia Tymoshenko on Saturday urged Ukrainians to oust President Viktor Yanukovych's government in legislative elections next month, in a video message recorded in detention.

Tymoshenko's lawyers recorded the wobbly hand-held video at the hospital in the eastern city of Kharkiv where she has for the last few months stayed for treatment on chronic back pains.

Myanmar's President Thein Sein made an unprecedented tribute to opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi's "efforts for democracy" and vowed to resolve ethnic strife in a landmark U.N. speech.

Thein Sein, the first Myanmar leader to speak to the U.N. General Assembly, also told the annual gathering on Thursday that he wants to "completely end" a long-running war with ethnic rebels in Kachin state.