A boat crammed with migrants was towed out to sea by the Thai navy and then held up by Malaysian vessels on Saturday, the latest round of "maritime ping-pong" by Asian states determined not to let asylum seekers come ashore.
The head of Burundi's army said on Thursday that an attempted coup had failed and forces loyal to President Pierre Nkurunziza were in control but heavy gunfire in the capital suggested the battle for power was not yet over.
The Afghan Taliban claimed responsibility on Thursday for an attack on a popular guesthouse in Kabul that killed at least 14 people, including foreigners attending a dinner and arriving for a concert.
The Vatican concluded its first treaty that formally recognises the State of Palestine, with an agreement on Catholic Church activities in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, the Holy See said on Wednesday.
A state-owned Russian bank is paying for the legal defense of an employee charged with posing as a banker in New York while secretly spying for Moscow, his lawyer confirmed on Tuesday.
A five-day humanitarian truce in Yemen appeared to be broadly holding on Wednesday, despite reports of air strikes overnight by Saudi-led forces and continued military operations by the country's dominant Iranian-allied Houthi group in the east.
Niger has approved a law against the smuggling of migrants in an effort to stem the deadly flow of vulnerable Africans across its vast desert north, many of them headed toward Libya and on to Europe.
International inspectors have found traces of sarin and VX nerve agent at a military research site in Syria that had not been declared to the global chemical weapons watchdog, diplomatic sources said on Friday.
Hundreds of members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood have returned from exile, hoping to rebuild a movement which was crushed decades ago at home and is deemed a terrorist organization by leading Arab states.
Washington wants to be certain that any nuclear deal between Iran and major powers includes the possibility of restoring U.N. sanctions if Tehran breaks the agreement without risking Russian and Chinese vetoes, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday.
Yemeni Houthi rebels called on the United Nations on Saturday to seek an end to Saudi Arabian air strikes against them that they described as blatant aggression against the country.
Customs inspections at Kathmandu airport are holding up vital relief supplies for earthquake survivors in Nepal, a U.N. official said on Saturday, as the death toll from the disaster a week ago passed 6,600.
North Korea condemned on Friday plans by Japan to hold a summit in New York on the abduction of Japanese citizens by Pyongyang decades ago, saying the issue had been resolved and accusing Tokyo of escalating a human rights campaign against North Korea.
Thousands of people were still missing in Nepal on Friday as food and help began to trickle through to those stranded in remote areas after last week's earthquake which killed 6,250.
Israel has returned 15 fishing boats seized from Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, both sides said on Thursday, the latest measure cast as shoring up the coastal enclave's shattered economy.
A leftist moderate promising to press for a peace deal in ethnically-split Cyprus swept to victory in a Turkish Cypriot presidential election runoff on Sunday.
The United Nations envoy to Syria said on Friday he will begin meeting in May with the country's government, opposition groups, and regional powers including Iran to assess by the end of June whether there is any hope brokering an end to the war.
It's a nightly exercise in futility: Yemen's Houthis fire rifles at Saudi F-15 jets thundering overhead. But the guerrillas' Kalashnikovs would be more formidable if and when Saudi Arabia decided to fight a ground war.
The European Union proposed doubling the size of its Mediterranean search and rescue operations on Monday, as the first bodies were brought ashore of some 900 people feared killed in the deadliest shipwreck while trying to reach Europe.
Yemen's newly-appointed Vice President Khaled Bahah, a widely respected figure named this week to shore up the legitimacy of the exiled Saudi-backed government, said on Thursday he hoped to avert a Saudi-led invasion to restore unity to the country.
Worsening violence in Yemen has made almost half the country's population "food insecure", with flour shortages, closed shops and disrupted supply routes driving up food prices, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said on Thursday.
