Taliban insurgent leaders pledged on Monday to release the final four Turkish engineers held hostage since their helicopter crashed in eastern Afghanistan last month.
Four other Turkish engineers aboard the helicopter were freed on Sunday, three weeks after the crash in Logar province, a Taliban stronghold south of the capital Kabul.
Full StoryThe Philippines held elections Monday seen as crucial for President Benigno Aquino's bold reform agenda, as deadly violence and graft-tainted candidates underlined the nation's deep-rooted problems.
Aquino has called for the mid-term polls, in which thousands of local leaders plus national legislators will be elected, to be a referendum on his efforts to transform a corrupt political system and an underperforming economy.
Full StoryNorth Korea has replaced its hawkish armed forces minister after just six months in the job -- the latest in a long line of top military reshuffles by supreme leader Kim Jong-Un.
The new minister was identified by the Korean Central News Agency on Sunday as Jang Jong-Nam, a relatively young and little-known field commander believed to be in his mid-50s.
Full StorySerbia's Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic Sunday urged Serbs living in northern Kosovo to accept an EU-brokered agreement to normalize relations between Serbia and its breakaway former province, while admitting the accord was not ideal.
The 40,000 Serbs make up the majority of residents of northern Kosovo and are largely opposed to the deal, which determines the amount of autonomy afforded to them in Kosovo, which proclaimed independence from Serbia in 2008 -- a move never accepted by Belgrade.
Full StoryPakistani election winner Nawaz Sharif was in talks Sunday to form a new government, as U.S. President Barack Obama said Washington was ready to work with Islamabad "as equal partners".
Obama welcomed the "historic, peaceful and transparent transfer of civilian power" in Pakistan, where Sharif's two biggest challenges are likely to be fixing the shattered economy and tackling Islamist militancy.
Full StoryGunmen opened fire on dozens of people marching in a Mother's Day neighborhood parade in New Orleans on Sunday, wounding at least 19, including two children, police said.
FBI spokeswoman Mary Beth Romig said federal investigators have no indication that the shooting was an act of terrorism.
Full StoryThe police chief of Pakistan's restive southwestern province of Baluchistan narrowly escaped a suicide attack Sunday that killed at least six people and wounded 46 others, officials said.
Inspector General Mushtaq Sukhera had just entered his residence in the provincial capital Quetta when a suicide bomber in a vehicle laden with explosives blew themselves up outside.
Full StoryDenmark's Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt on Sunday made an unannounced visit to Afghanistan where she met Danish soldiers in the troubled southwestern Helmand province, her office said.
"The prime minister visited the special forces in Lashkar Gah as well as Danish troops and envoys at Camp Price... and Camp Bastion," it said in a statement.
Full StoryA police officer was killed and four were injured when armed gunmen attacked a police station in the northeastern Kenyan town of Mandera on the border with war-torn Somalia, police said Sunday.
"There was an attack with one fatality and injuries," regional police chief Charlton Mureithi said, without elaborating.
Full StoryOne of Britain's most wanted fugitives, 32-year-old Andrew Moran, has been arrested in a Spanish coastal town after four years on the run, police said Sunday.
Moran, who absconded from his trial for armed robbery in 2009, was detained in the town of Calpe on the Costa Blanca, according to a Spanish police statement, which described the Briton as "a dangerous fugitive".
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