A powerful blast ripped through a ten-story apartment building in Argentina's third largest city Tuesday, setting it ablaze and leaving at least six dead and 58 injured.

The incident, apparently due to a gas leak in the building, occurred at 9:30 a.m., Rosario civil defense director Raul Reinone told reporters.

Former U.S. President George W. Bush underwent surgery Tuesday to clear a blocked artery in his heart but plans to resume his normal schedule this week, his office said.

Doctors detected the problem during a routine check up on Monday on the 67-year-old ex-president and successfully implanted a device called a stent to unblock his artery in an operation carried out in Texas, the office said.

Germany said on Tuesday it had cancelled a 1960s surveillance pact with France after annulling similar accords with the U.S. and Britain in the wake of revelations about U.S. online spying.

The 1969 accord was axed "in mutual agreement", the foreign ministry said, four days after the Washington and London accords were nixed amid the debate on data privacy protection sparked by the snooping scandal.

Gunfire and explosions shook one northeastern Nigerian town Tuesday while soldiers slapped a round-the-clock curfew on another in the region hit by waves of insurgent attacks, the military and residents said.

Clashes broke out in the town of Gamboru Ngala on the border with Cameroon on Monday night and continued on Tuesday, a resident said. The military had not commented on the situation there and details remained unclear.

Cuba said Tuesday it was looking forward to closer cooperation with North Korea after "favorable" talks in Pyongyang.

The positive assessment of relations between the two communist-ruled states comes three weeks after the seizure in Panama of a North Korean cargo ship loaded with undeclared Cuban arms, including two MiG-21 fighter jets.

Russia's deputy foreign minister on Tuesday slammed the United States for questioning whether President Barack Obama would meet his Russian counterpart in September after Moscow gave asylum to fugitive Edward Snowden.

"The U.S. administration is bringing into question bilateral contact at the highest level. I think this is absolute distortion of reality, it's looking at the world in a crooked mirror," deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said in an interview with the Interfax news agency.

Heavy rains and flash floods in Khartoum and other parts of Sudan have killed 11 people and affected almost 100,000 in the past week, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

Giving the first official figures for the impact of the flooding, which began on August 1, the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the capital and Nile state to its north were the worst hit, but that five other states were also inundated.

Malta refused Tuesday to allow 102 migrants rescued from a leaking dinghy on to the island despite pressure from the European Commission to let them disembark on humanitarian grounds.

The migrants, including a four-month-old baby and four pregnant women, were rescued from their badly damaged inflatable boat on Monday by the Liberian-flagged Salamis oil tanker 80 kilometers (50 miles) off the Libyan coast.

Around 100 supporters of Mali's main Tuareg rebel group demonstrated Tuesday in the northern city of Kidal to demand the release of fighters detained in Bamako.

"We are marching today to demand that Mali release Tuareg fighters from the MNLA (National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad) held in Bamako," Moussa Ag Mohamed, a young demonstrator, told Agence France Presse by phone.

Japan on Tuesday unveiled its biggest warship since World War II, a huge flat-top destroyer that has raised eyebrows in China and elsewhere because it bears a strong resemblance to a conventional aircraft carrier.

The ship, which has a flight deck that is nearly 250 meters (820 feet) long, is designed to carry up to 14 helicopters. Japanese officials say it will be used in national defense — particularly in anti-submarine warfare and border-area surveillance missions — and to bolster the nation's ability to transport personnel and supplies in response to large-scale natural disasters, like the devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011.