Suspected Muslim insurgents have killed seven people and injured 10 more in Thailand's violence-plagued south, police said on Monday.

Police Col. Kwandee Chimplee said assailants opened fire at a security checkpoint on Sunday night in Narathiwat city, then set off homemade bombs near two grocery stores in the same area.

An earthquake of 7.3 magnitude rocked eastern Turkey on Sunday, killing more than 70 people, with a seismological institute saying up to 1,000 people could lie dead under the rubble of dozens of collapsed buildings.

Turkey's strongest earthquake in years struck Van, a large eastern city populated mainly by Kurds.

Libya's interim government will hand the body of slain despot Moammar Gadhafi to his relatives after consulting with them on the location of his burial, a senior government advisor said on Sunday.

"The decision has been taken to hand him over to his extended family, because none of his immediate family are present at this moment," Ahmed Jibril told Agence France Presse.

More than 200 international philosophers braved strikes and protests to come to Greece this month to join a forum and debate matters of the mind.

Topics on the program included "The Limits of Abstraction: Finding Space for Novel Explanation" and "Partial Realism, Anti-realism and Deflationary Realism: Can History Settle the Argument?"

Move over azuki and sweet sticky rice. While Japanese pastry chefs may have started using cocoa a few centuries after the West, this once foreign flavor has captivated Japan's confectionery world.

Japanese chocolate makers and pastry chefs were the star guests at the 17th Salon du Chocolat held in Paris this week. One of them, Susumu Koyana, 47, was even named "Best Foreign Chocolatier" -- winning out over top masters from celebrated chocolate-making nations like Belgium and Switzerland.

A U.S. restaurant famous for cooking up giant hamburgers has outdone itself.

The Detroit News reports that Mallie's Sports Grill & Bar made a 338-pound (153-kilogram) "Absolutely Ridiculous Burger" on Thursday. A crowd gathered to salivate over the unveiling of the $2,000 menu item.

Iraqis voiced happiness on Saturday over President Barack Obama's declaration that U.S. forces will leave by year-end, but some spoke of concern the pullout could further destabilize their country.

The decision to withdraw all remaining soldiers in the country after nearly nine years of war, and the deaths of more than 4,400 US troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis, came after Baghdad and Washington failed to agree to legal immunity for a training mission past 2011.

NATO-led peacekeepers tried to remove roadblocks in northern Kosovo on Saturday, but were prevented by Serbs guarding the blockade that has paralyzed travel in the tense region.

The troops in full riot gear tried overnight to push through three of the 16 roadblocks formed from vehicles, rocks, mud and logs. But they were met by hundreds of Serbs who sat on the roads to stop the advance.

Asian markets were mixed in nervous trade Friday as European leaders put back a final plan to contain the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis.

A rift between France and Germany over how to boost the continent's rescue fund made it unlikely a summit on Sunday would end in a solid deal, leading the 17-nation bloc to announce a second meeting would be held Wednesday.

Famed New York painter Chuck Close and other artists are suing Sotheby's, Christie's and eBay, contending the auctioneers willfully violated a California law requiring royalty payments on sales of their works.

The three federal suits filed Tuesday seek class-action status to represent many other artists and demand unspecified royalties and damages — which could total hundreds of thousands of dollars given current art prices.