Four NATO peacekeepers and six Serb protesters were wounded Tuesday when violence erupted at a disputed crossing point between Serbia and Kosovo, officials said.

The violence came just hours before Belgrade was due to resume EU-mediated talks with Pristina aimed at calming tensions in majority-Serb northern Kosovo.

Sixteen wedding guests, including 11 children, were killed Tuesday when a bus hit a roadside bomb in western Afghanistan, underscoring the heavy toll paid by civilians in a decade of war.

Another five people were killed in a suicide car bombing near the police headquarters in southern Helmand province, two months after British troops handed the Afghan government control of the local capital Lashkar Gah.

A Turkish exploration ship is searching for gas and oil "close to" a Cypriot drilling zone off the divided Mediterranean island of Cyprus, a senior energy ministry official said Tuesday.

"Our ship is exploring gas close to the Greek Cypriot zone, and under the escort of Turkish naval vessels," the official told Agence France Presse, speaking on condition of anonymity.

At least seven people were killed as Typhoon Nesat smashed the Philippines on Tuesday, authorities said, with the capital Manila enduring waist-deep floods, blackouts and dramatic storm surges.

The Philippines is hit by about 20 major storms annually, many of them deadly, but the government said Nesat was one of the largest the country had faced this year, with its rain and wind path twice as big as average.

Three men suspected of plotting an attack on a Danish newspaper that printed controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in 2005 will go on trial in Norway next month, a state prosecutor said Tuesday.

The three suspects, who were arrested in July 2010, have been charged with "conspiracy to commit a terrorist attack in northern Europe," the prosecutor Geir Evanger told Agence France Presse.

More than 150 Spanish police raided a suspected al-Qaida financing ring Tuesday, arresting five Algerian men and seizing computer material, the government said.

Police suspected the men sent money to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, which has its roots in Algeria and carries out attacks and kidnappings in north Africa, the interior ministry said in a statement.

Two metro trains collided in Shanghai on Tuesday, injuring more than 240 people, the system operator said, just months after a deadly high-speed rail crash that shocked China.

The firm blamed the accident on a signal failure -- the same cause as a July train crash that killed at least 40 people and shook public confidence in China's vast rail network.

A passenger was beaten to death by staff on a train in eastern China, state media reported, dealing a fresh blow to the rail industry's reputation following a fatal crash in July.

Three train staff seized the middle-aged man by the throat and savagely beat him after he intervened in an argument involving another passenger, Jiangxi Television, a local station, reported on Monday.

Australia will remove all gender barriers in its military over the next five years, opening up positions that had previously been considered too dangerous for women, including front-line combat roles, a minister said Tuesday.

Australia will follow Canada and New Zealand in allowing women who meet physical and psychological criteria to perform any role they choose, Defense Minister Stephen Smith said.

A suicide car bombing killed five people and wounded two dozen others near a police headquarters in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, officials said.

Mohammad Rasoul, a spokesman for the Afghan army, said three police were killed and three others wounded in the blast in Lashkar Gah, capital of troubled Helmand province.