North Korea announced Tuesday it would grant an amnesty for prisoners to mark the upcoming birth anniversaries of its late leaders.

The official news agency said a parliamentary decree had authorized the amnesty from February 1, embodying the "noble, benevolent and all-embracing politics of President Kim Il-Sung and leader Kim Jong-Il".

President Barack Obama said Monday his chief of staff Bill Daley, brought into the White House to repair tarnished ties with big business, was stepping down in an early election-year staff shake-up.

"Obviously, it wasn't easy news to hear," Obama said, as he announced Daley wanted to leave for their mutual hometown of Chicago, and unveiled that Budget Director Jacob Lew would take over the powerful position.

Colombia's Marxist FARC guerrillas said Monday they were willing to negotiate with President Juan Manuel Santos, in a statement signed by the group's new leader, named just two months ago.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia said there are "issues we are interested in dealing with at a hypothetical negotiating table," in a statement from FARC chief Timoleon 'Timochenko' Jimenez posted on a rebel website.

A former American soldier with specialist intelligence and cryptology training has been charged with trying to join Somalia's al-Qaida-linked Shebab militants, U.S. justice officials said Monday.

Craig Baxam, a 24-year-old from the Maryland suburbs outside Washington, appeared briefly in court Monday near the U.S. capital to hear charges that he attempted to join -- and provide material support to -- a terrorist group.

At least two policemen were killed when a group of suicide bombers stormed a government building in southeastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, the interior ministry and officials said.

Two attackers blew themselves up in the attack; one other was killed in an exchange of fire with police, while one remaining suicide bomber remained at large.

A bomb targeting a militia opposed to the Pakistani Taliban exploded in a market close to the Afghan border on Tuesday, killing 35 people in the deadliest blast in the country in several months, officials said.

The explosion hit vehicles being used by the militia in the Khyber region, said local security officer Khan Dad Khan.

The U.N. atomic agency said Monday that Iran is now enriching uranium at a new site in a hard-to-bomb mountain bunker, in a move set to stoke Western suspicions further that Tehran wants nuclear weapons.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that Iran's enriching uranium to 20 percent at the Fordo site was "a further escalation of their ongoing violations with regard to their nuclear obligations."

Nigerian police and protesters clashed on Monday and three people were shot dead as tens of thousands demonstrated nationwide over fuel price hikes and a general strike shut down the country.

The launch of what unions called an indefinite strike came at a crucial moment for Africa's most populous nation and largest oil producer, already hit by spiraling violence blamed on Islamist sect Boko Haram.

NATO warships have freed Iranian and Indian vessels held by Somali pirates off the Horn of Africa, rescuing five Iranian, nine Pakistani and 20 Indian crew members, NATO said Monday.

The NATO operation came days after the U.S. navy saved 13 Iranian fishermen who were held hostage by pirates for weeks in the Arabian Sea, a rescue welcomed by Tehran amid heightened tensions with Washington.

Pope Benedict XVI on Monday said peace and reconciliation in Africa remained a "distant" goal, pointing to anti-Christian attacks in northern Nigeria that have killed dozens of people in recent days.

"On the continent of Africa ... it is essential that cooperation between Christian communities and governments favor progress along the path of justice, peace and reconciliation, where respect is shown for members of all ethnic groups and all religions," the pope said in a speech at the Vatican.