United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Monday he would urge the Security Council to reinforce the U.N. mission in South Sudan, as violence in the world's youngest nation mounts.

Hoping to beef up the mission's capacity to protect civilians, the U.N. secretary general called for "additional troops, police and logistical assets," although he did not specify numbers.

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa warned Monday that reports U.S. intelligence played a role in a 2008 Colombian attack on FARC rebels in his country as a threat to regional peace efforts.

Over the weekend, the Washington Post reported that a secret Central Intelligence Agency program had helped Colombia kill at least two dozen leftist guerrilla leaders.

Mikhail Kalashnikov, the designer of fabled AK-47 automatic rifle, died Monday, the office of the presidency in the Udmurtia region where he worked said. He was 94.

Kalashnikov designed a weapon that became synonymous with killing on a sometimes indiscriminate scale but was seen in the Soviet Union as a national hero and symbol of Moscow's proud military past.

The United States special envoy to South Sudan arrived in the troubled capital Juba Monday, as world leaders step up efforts to avert an all-out civil war.

The envoy, Donald Booth, follows efforts by regional foreign ministers to push for peace, and comes as the U.S. and United Nations demand the fighting stop.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is planning a major cabinet reshuffle amid mounting tensions over an anti-graft probe that has touched the heart of the government, local media reported.

Erdogan, who was already expected to reshuffle his cabinet ahead of local elections on March 30, is expected to replace 10 ministers by the end of the month, the Hurriyet newspaper reported.

Indian police have arrested eight people after the hands of two laborers were chopped off in a dispute over money, an officer said Monday, with the victims in serious condition in hospital.

Two laborers were admitted to a hospital in remote and impoverished Kalahandi district of Orissa state last week after they were discovered bleeding with their hands chopped off, the officer said.

Three ex-rebels shot dead by French troops in the capital of the Central African Republic on Sunday were members of the presidential guard and were "killed in cold blood," the CAR presidency said.

"They were killed in cold blood by members of Sangaris," presidential spokesman Guy Simplice Kodegue said on Monday, referring to the French force sent this month to disarm ex-rebels sowing chaos in the country.

Ukraine's opposition is in disarray after failing to offer a clear agenda to their supporters in response to the signing by President Viktor Yanukovych of a bailout deal with Russia, analysts say.

While the protests against the authorities' decision to scrap an integration pact with the EU under Kremlin pressure have continued in the streets of Kiev, opposition leaders appear unable to harness this support in an effective way.

A man died after setting fire to himself and his nine-year-old son at a school playground in the Japanese capital Tokyo on Monday in what police suspect was a murder-suicide bid, a report said.

The boy suffered serious injuries and remains unconscious in hospital, Kyodo News quoted police as saying.

Israeli Mossad agents operating in Ethiopia in 1962 unwittingly trained Nelson Mandela in hand-to-hand combat, weaponry and sabotage, according to a document released by Israel's state archives.

A letter from a Mossad official to the foreign ministry, dated October 11, 1962 titled "THE BLACK PIMPERNEL" and released to the public on Sunday, recalls a conversation in which "we discussed a trainee in Ethiopia named David Mobasari, from Rhodesia".