A team of U.N. experts will head to Panama next week to inspect a North Korean ship impounded last month after the discovery of Cuban missile parts in its cargo.
Luxembourg's U.N. ambassador Sylvie Lucas announced the move on Wednesday.

A plane from Ireland made an emergency landing at the Philadelphia International Airport in the United States on Wednesday because of an unspecified threat, the Associated Press reported.
The AP said federal authorities were at the airport because of an apparent bomb threat.

Thousands of people who fled attacks by a Uganda-led rebel group in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo's Kamango need urgent aid, the U.N. humanitarian office said Wednesday.
The town of Kamango in the northernmost part of DR Congo's unstable North Kivu province was attacked and briefly occupied on July 11 by rebels from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).

Guantanamo detainees are marking six months of an unprecedented hunger strike that has trained attention on the more than 150 men held at the U.S. military prison without charge or trial.
The strike began on February 6 as a spontaneous reaction to a cell sweep in which guards allegedly mishandled copies of the Koran, but soon grew into a mass protest against the legal limbo within the walls of the War on Terror prison.

An intercepted conference call between al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and his top operatives was prompted the United States to close its Middle East diplomatic missions, according to a report Wednesday.
Online journal The Daily Beast, citing U.S. intelligence sources, said more than 20 al-Qaida operatives from across the militant group's global network were on the call.

South African church leaders on Wednesday led prayers in front of the hospital where critically ill former South African president Nelson Mandela is soon to mark two months in care.
Archbishop Joe Seoka used the eve of the sorrow-tinged anniversary to urge South Africans to rally together.

The Czech parliament met Wednesday for a confidence vote on the new technocrat government, which is unlikely to win but could still remain in power with a little help from its ally, the president.
Appointed by President Milos Zeman on July 10, the government of leftwing economist Jiri Rusnok replaced a center-right coalition cabinet that was toppled by a bribery and spy scandal in June.

British Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday warned his Spanish counterpart that the escalating tit-for-tat over border tensions in Gibraltar risked damaging relations between their countries.
Cameron and Mariano Rajoy discussed ways to calm the situation in a call Britain described as "constructive" after tensions rose at the weekend when Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo threatened to impose steep tolls to cross the border.

South African police Wednesday made 45 arrests after firing rubber bullets to disperse a protest against poor living conditions in a township west of Johannesburg.
Residents of Fochville, many of whom live in shacks, have been protesting since Tuesday, demanding better homes and access to running water.

U.S. President Barack Obama will visit Sweden in early September, the Swedish prime minister's office announced on Wednesday.
"On Wednesday 4 and Thursday 5 September, U.S. President Barack Obama will visit Sweden at the invitation of Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt. It will be the first time an incumbent U.S. president pays a bilateral visit to Sweden," the office said in a statement.
