Pakistan bill exempts top ministers from contempt

Philippine police said an alleged bandit leader and 10 other inmates escaped from a jail in the south of the country Tuesday by cutting through iron bars with a hacksaw.

A UN agency has expressed concern that torture may have been used to extract confessions over the alleged serial poisoning of Afghan schoolgirls, which experts say is more likely to be mass hysteria.

Romanian President Traian Basescu handed over power Tuesday to his rival, parliament speaker Crin Antonescu, after the constitutional court approved his controversial suspension by lawmakers.

Park Geun-hye, the daughter of an assassinated dictator, launched her campaign Tuesday to become South Korea’s first female president with polls placing her as frontrunner in December’s election.

The International Criminal Court Tuesday sentenced Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga to 14 years in jail for using child soldiers in his rebel army, in the tribunal’s first such order.

In Syria’s rebel-held city Qusayr, which has been besieged by government forces for months, the shelves are empty and the market practically destroyed as residents prepare for the holy month of Ramadan.

Yasser Arafat’s widow will launch a court case in France into the unexplained death of the iconic Palestinian leader eight years ago after a media report suggested he may have been poisoned, her lawyer said on Tuesday.

Cyprus has drawn up plans to take in up to 200,000 refugees from the fighting in Syria, where the crackdown by government troops against opposition forces has intensified in recent weeks.

India has paid $1.1 million to buy a collection of letters, papers and photographs relating to Indian independence icon Mahatma Gandhi, preventing their sale at a planned auction in London.

The head of the powerful National Security Agency, General Keith Alexander, said late Monday the US must adopt a law to protect the country from cyberattacks while insisting that it would respect privacy.