President Thein Sein left Myanmar Sunday for a visit to Britain and France, an official said, as the former junta general looks to build on support for his much-lauded reforms.

"The president left Yangon this morning to visit Britain and France," a government official told AFP without giving further details of the visit, Thein Sein's second trip to Europe in months.

Seven police officers were injured in Belfast after being attacked with petrol bombs in a second night of violence by Protestant rioters in the Northern Irish capital, a spokeswoman said Sunday.

Bricks, bottles, furniture and other missiles were also hurled on Saturday night by hooded youths, some with British flags covering their faces.

Eastern China was Sunday bracing for torrential downpours from Typhoon Soulik which forced the evacuation of half a million people after killing two in Taiwan.

Soulik lashed coastal Fujian province with winds of 118 kilometres per hour (73 mph) when it made landfall but had weakened to a tropical depression as it moved inland, the China Meteorological Administration said.

U.S. intelligence leaker Edward Snowden on Sunday marked three weeks stuck in a Moscow airport transit lounge, as a supporter warned the fugitive possessed even more secrets that could damage the U.S. government.

Snowden, wanted by the United States for revealing sensational details of its vast spying operations, flew into Russia from Hong Kong on June 23 and has since languished in the transit zone of the capital's Sheremetyevo airport.

U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon is "outraged" at the killing of seven Tanzanian peacekeepers in an ambush in Darfur and called on the Sudanese government to take action, his spokesman said Saturday.

The seven were killed by unidentified attackers near Nyala in South Darfur. It was the latest of a series of attacks on U.N. troops in the western region this year. No perpetrators have yet been caught.

Bolivia's leftist president Evo Morales on Saturday accused U.S. intelligence of hacking into the email accounts of top Bolivian officials, saying he had shut his own account down.

Latin American leaders have lashed out at Washington over recent revelations of vast surveillance programs, some of which allegedly targeted regional allies and adversaries alike.

Turkish riot police on Saturday fired rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannon to disperse hundreds of protesters trying to enter an Istanbul square that was the cradle of deadly unrest that engulfed the country in June.

The police moved in when demonstrators protesting in the city's Beyoglu neighborhood against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan moved toward nearby Taksim Square.

The Philippine government has resolved a key hurdle in peace talks with Muslim rebels, it announced early Sunday, bringing it closer to ending an insurgency that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

After six days of negotiations, Manila said it struck a compromise on sharing local revenues with a Muslim self-rule area in the Mindanao region that is expected to be led by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

A court in Kabul ordered the early release of three people convicted over the torture of a child bride, an official confirmed Saturday, in a move denounced by activists as a blow for women's rights.

Sahar Gul, who was 15 at the time her ordeal, was burned, beaten and had her fingernails pulled out by her husband and in-laws after she refused to become a prostitute in a case that shocked the world.

Seven peacekeepers were killed on Saturday during an ambush in Sudan's Darfur region, the African Union-U.N. Mission said, marking the worst-ever losses in the five-year history of the operation.

The attack adds to worsening violence in Sudan's far-west region and happened near the peacekeepers' base at Manawashi, north of the South Darfur state capital Nyala.