UNITED NATIONS

Oslo courts have convicted Mullah Krekar, an Iraqi-born Islamist cleric, to five years in prison for posting online death threats against Kurdish immigrants and Norwegian officials.

After failed attempts in the U.N. Security Council to formulate a demand that President Bashar al-Assad end a deadly crackdown on dissenters, his government accepted Annan's six-point plan.

The Nuclear Security Summit in the South Korean capital ended on Tuesday with world leaders making fresh commitments towards building a safer world devoid of nuclear terrorism. The summit ended with a joint declaration, dubbed the Seoul Communique. The full text of the declaration, published by South Korea's official news agency Yonhap News, is below:

The US was the only western country to have carried out judicial executions last year and the 43 executions in the country ranked it fifth in the world in capital punishment, behind China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, Amnesty International said Monday.

Syrian opposition activists gathered in Istanbul to endorse a program for political change to unify their movement, but the conference proved divisive even before officially opens Tuesday.

Israel severed ties Monday with the United Nations Human Rights Council after it voted to initiate an investigation into human rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Leading up to the nuclear summit in South Korea this week, Obama and Hu both expressed their serious concern about the launch, which was first described by North Korea as a peaceful launch of an earth observation satellite.

Annan has already received support for the plan from Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and foreign minister Sergey Lavrov

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev extended complete support to the UN-Arab League envoy in Syria, saying that Kofi Annan's resolution represented the last chance for preventing the violent insurgency from turning into a civil war. Medvedev's strong message to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad came close on the heels of US President Barack Obama announcing his plans to send non-lethal aid to the Syrian opposition.

Hundreds of Occupy Wall Street activists marched through the streets of New York City Saturday protesting police violence and demanding the resignation of New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

President Barack Obama, visiting South Korea, called on the Communist North Sunday to call off a planned rocket launch, and warned that food aid in return for disarmament would be at risk.

Police Saturday arrested 14 people in connection with two separate Occupy Wall Street protests in New York.

The United Nations' Central Africa envoy believes Joseph Kony is hiding in the Central African Republic.

Sri Lanka has rejected a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution urging the country to look into alleged war crimes committed by the military in 2009.

The leader of the three-day-old coup in Mali says he will step down and schedule elections once security is established in the country.

On Friday, Israel allowed nine Egyptian tankers carrying nearly half a million liters of industrial fuel to pass through the Kerem Shalom border crossing and into Gaza, enough to run the plant for about a day.

Of the 47 delegations at the Geneva talks, 41 voted in favor of the resolutions against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while Russia, China and Cuba voted against it.

ZTE Corp, China's second-largest telecommunications equipment maker, said it will curtail its business in Iran following a report that it had sold Iran's largest telecom firm a powerful surveillance system capable of monitoring telephone and Internet communications.

The group UltraViolet said it hoped Obama's nominee, a doctor with extensive experience in public health and now Dartmouth College's president, will be a champion for women and girls throughout the world.

Kim, 52, will be the first physician to head the bank and the second U.S. nominee to have been born abroad. He has served as Dartmouth College's president since 2009.

A coalition of advocacy groups is asking the United Nations to intervene to help stop California's widespread use of solitary confinement, saying the routine isolation of inmates is akin to torture.