A U.N. expert tasked with investigating alleged human rights abuses in Iran will talk to Iranian activists in France, Germany and Belgium this week after a request to visit the country itself was refused.

United Nations Special Rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed will meet Iranians living in the three countries during a fact-finding mission from November 30 to December 8.

Iranian pro-regime students stormed the British diplomatic compounds in Tehran on Tuesday, bringing down the Union Jack flag and throwing documents from windows in scenes reminiscent of the anger against Western powers after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The mob surged past riot police into the British Embassy compound — which they pelted with petrol bombs and stones — two days after Iran's parliament approved a bill that reduces diplomatic relations with Britain following London's support of recently upgraded Western sanctions on Tehran over its disputed nuclear program.

Russia on Tuesday activated a radar warning system against incoming missiles in its exclave of Kaliningrad on the borders of the EU, in response to Western plans for a U.S. missile shield in Europe.

President Dmitry Medvedev announced that the Voronezh-DM station was moving onto immediate combat readiness, days after threatening to deploy missiles in Kaliningrad amid a growing dispute with the West.

Pakistan decided Tuesday to boycott a key international conference on Afghanistan next month, ramping up its protest over lethal cross-border NATO air strikes that have plunged U.S. ties into deep crisis.

The decision was taken at a Pakistani cabinet meeting in the eastern city of Lahore, just days after Islamabad confirmed it was mulling its attendance in the German city of Bonn, where Pakistan's participation was considered vital.

The United States is building a barrier stretching 300 feet (90 meters) out into the Pacific to bar illegal immigrants from using a low-tide route to flood into southern California from Mexico.

The $4.3 million project will replace a dilapidated border fence with an 18-foot (nearly six-meter) high corrosion-proof barrier between Tijuana on the Mexican side and the U.S. side south of San Diego.

NATO's U.S.-led force in Afghanistan will re-train its troops by December 5 on how to avoid civilian casualties, following fresh accusations of civilian killings, President Hamid Karzai's office said Tuesday.

The move comes with NATO already facing uncomfortable fallout after an air strike killed 24 Pakistani troops near the Afghan border on Saturday.

Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, grappling with a devastating flood crisis, was admitted to hospital on Tuesday with food poisoning, her government said.

"She is suffering from diarrhea due to food poisoning," government spokeswoman Titima Chaisang told reporters, adding that Yingluck had asked her deputy to chair a cabinet meeting in her place.

A Kenyan court issued an arrest warrant Monday for Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir, wanted by the International Criminal Court on genocide charges.

Though Kenya has ratified the founding the ICC's founding Rome statute, it failed to arrest the Sudanese leader when he visited the country in August 2010.

Iran's Guardians Council on Monday approved a parliamentary bill demanding Britain's ambassador to Tehran be expelled within two weeks, making it law, the website for state television reported.

The confirmation by the council, whose jurists and clerics vet parliamentary texts to make sure they adhere to Islamic and constitutional rules, means Iran's foreign ministry now has to apply the measure.

Somalia's Islamist Shebab rebels ordered 16 international aid agencies shut Monday in areas they control after armed raids on several offices, and warned more would follow if they did not toe the line.

"Any organization found to be supporting or actively engaged in activities deemed detrimental to the attainment of an Islamic State, or performing duties other than that which it formally proclaims, will be banned immediately without prior warning," the Shebab said in a statement.