New York authorities announced Sunday they had arrested and charged a U.S. al-Qaida sympathizer for plotting to build pipe bombs to kill government workers and returning U.S. troops.

City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said 27-year-old Jose Pimentel, a native of the Dominican Republic who became a U.S. citizen and converted to Islam, had gleaned his bomb-making knowledge from an online magazine published by slain radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi.

Iran is ready to cooperate "further" with the U.N. atomic energy watchdog if it "balances its approach" to the Islamic republic, Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said on Sunday, according to the ISNA news agency.

"We are prepared to cooperate with the agency more than ever, if the (U.N.) agency balances its approach and complies with its statutes and the safeguard agreements," Salehi was quoted as saying.

Turkish security forces foiled an attempted bombing blamed on Kurdish rebels on a vital oil pipeline in the southeast of the country on Sunday, local security sources said.

Three explosive charges weighing a total of 200 kilograms were found along the pipeline carrying oil from Iraq and were later defused by bomb disposal experts.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul headed to Britain on Sunday for a three-day state visit aimed at seeking support from the Turkey's ally in its bid to join the EU.

"I will underline the importance of England's continued support in making sure negotiations are not blocked by artificial political obstacles," Gul told journalists in Turkey before flying off to London.

The death toll from Thailand's worst flooding in more than half a century has passed 600.

The floods began in late July, fed by heavy monsoon rains and a series of tropical storms. The floodwaters swamped entire towns as they moved south through the country's central heartland to Bangkok and the Gulf of Thailand. More than two-thirds of the country's 77 provinces have been affected.

Spaniards voted in rain-swept elections Sunday that were all but certain to hand a thundering victory to the right and topple yet another debt-laden eurozone government.

Bowed by a 21.5 percent jobless rate, economic stagnation and deep spending cuts, the first voters of the 36 million-strong Spanish electorate headed to polls ready to punish the ruling Socialists.

More than 1,000 university students blocked a main highway in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday as they protested against any agreement that would allow U.S. troops to stay in Afghanistan after a planned transfer of authority in 2014.

An assembly of more than 2,000 tribal elders and dignitaries known as a loya jirga endorsed the idea of such agreement in a conference that ended Saturday, though they also backed a series of conditions proposed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai including the end of night raids by international troops and complete Afghan control over detainees.

Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S. returned home Sunday after being summoned to answer questions about his alleged role in a secret memo scandal that could cost him his job and threatens to engulf the country's president.

The controversy centers on a memo that was sent in May to Adm. Mike Mullen, the top U.S. military official at the time, asking for his help in reining in Pakistan's powerful military after the covert American raid that killed Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani garrison town.

The United States "failed" to get the U.N. atomic energy watchdog to refer Iran's nuclear program to the U.N. Security Council, Iran's deputy chief nuclear negotiator said, according to Iranian state media Sunday.

"The aim of the United States was to send the Iranian issue to the Security Council.... Thanks to the efforts of the Islamic Republic on the international stage, the American intention failed," Ali Bagheri said, according to the website of Iranian state television.

General Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. former commander of NATO troops in Afghanistan who left his post last year, visited President Hamid Karzai Saturday on a personal trip, officials said.

McChrystal was recalled by President Barack Obama from his role leading NATO troops in the war against the Taliban over comments made by him and his aides about senior political leaders to Rolling Stone magazine.