Iran has arrested four people suspected of attempting to sabotage one of its nuclear plants, Atomic Energy Organization chief Ali Akbar Salehi said on Sunday.

"Some time ago, we uncovered sabotage activities by several people at a nuclear plant," Salehi said in comments carried by the Mehr news agency.

A roadside bomb on Sunday killed three Pakistani soldiers and wounded at least seven others in the country's troubled northwest bordering Afghanistan, officials said.

A military vehicle on a routine patrol hit an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) in the Bannu region near Miranshah in North Waziristan tribal district, a bastion of militants linked to Al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Police have arrested 44 people in connection with deadly anti-Muslim violence in western Myanmar, state media said Sunday, after the latest violence erupted during a presidential tour of the strife-torn region.

Days of tensions in the town of Thandwe in restive Rakhine State turned into bloodshed on Tuesday, with a mob of hundreds descending on one outlying village torching homes and attacking local Muslims.

China was on its highest alert for Typhoon Fitow Sunday, with tens of thousands evacuated as the storm was set to slam into the country's eastern coast as early as Sunday night, weather authorities said.

The National Meteorological Center issued a red alert for the storm, saying it was expected to make landfall in China late Sunday or early Monday in an area between southern Zhejiang province and northern Fujian province.

The Pentagon said Saturday it will recall most of its furloughed employees as a U.S. government shutdown continued with no signs of an end to the impasse.

President Barack Obama used his weekly radio address to demand that Republican lawmakers "end this farce" and approve a budget to keep the government running.

British Prime Minister David Cameron faced a challenge from one of his party's lawmakers to hold a referendum on EU membership in October 2014, three years earlier than currently planned.

Adam Afriyie, an outspoken member of Cameron's Conservative party, told the Mail on Sunday newspaper he would on Monday launch a bid to force a parliamentary vote in coming weeks, which would then entail a referendum next year.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets Saturday in northern Spain to protest a crackdown on an association that aids jailed members of armed Basque separatist group ETA.

The protest in Bilbao came after police arrested 18 leaders of Herrira, a support group founded to help ETA prisoners and their families, in a series of raids on September 30.

Argentina's President Cristina Kirchner has been ordered to rest for a month after doctors found a brain hemorrhage linked to an August incident, her spokesman said Saturday.

Kirchner, 60, "sustained the head injury August 12 and had tests at the time that showed nothing," spokesman Alfredo Scoccimarro said.

Tropical Storm Karen lost strength late Saturday and became a tropical depression off the U.S. coast near Louisiana, the National Hurricane Center reported.

All tropical storm warnings were discontinued, but Karen is still expected to bring heavy rain and some coastal flooding as it moves east and rakes the Gulf Coast from central Louisiana to the Florida panhandle late Sunday and Monday.

A man who set himself on fire on the National Mall in the U.S. capital has died, police said Saturday.

The victim, who suffered from "significant burns throughout his body" died before 9 pm (0100 GMT) Friday, Washington Metropolitan Police spokesman Araz Alali told Agence France Presse.