WORLD

North Korea said on Tuesday it had detained a U.S. citizen who entered its territory, apparently confirming a report that an American activist crossed into the state to raise awareness about Pyongyang's human rights abuses.

Somali pirates seized a chemical tanker and a cargo vessel on Monday, underlining the continued risk to shipping in some of the world's busiest maritime trade routes.

Tens of thousands of government supporters rallied on Tuesday, state media said, and a reformist party called on Iran's rulers to apologise to the nation two days after eight people were killed in anti-government protests.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was appalled at China's execution of a Briton caught smuggling heroin on Tuesday, prompting China to denounce British accusations and defend its court system.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday U.S. plans for a missile defense system were the main obstacle to reaching a new deal on reducing Cold War arsenals of nuclear weapons.

A wing of al Qaeda claimed responsibility on Monday for a failed Christmas Day attack on a U.S.-bound passenger plane and President Barack Obama vowed to bring every element of U.S. power against those who threaten Americans' safety.

A British man convicted of smuggling drugs into China was told on Monday he would be executed in the next few hours, as his family made a last-minute plea for clemency, arguing he is mentally ill.

President Barack Obama will urge the United States to keep up pressure on its enemies in his first public reaction to the attempt to blow up a plane bound for Detroit, a White House spokesman said on Monday.

A regional wing of al Qaeda claimed responsibility on Monday for a failed Christmas Day attack on a U.S.-bound passenger plane, saying it was to avenge U.S. attacks on the group in Yemen.

Iran arrested at least 10 leading opposition figures on Monday, a day after eight people were killed in anti-government protests that erupted during a Shi'ite Muslim religious festival, an opposition website said.

Thailand expelled thousands of ethnic Hmong asylum-seekers from a refugee camp on Monday before their planned deportation to Laos, despite concerns about their fate.

When the first emergency alert from Detroit's airport went out just before noon on Sunday, it looked oddly like a mistaken repeat of the scare from two days earlier: Nigerian national caused disturbance on Flight 253.

The family of a Nigerian man who tried to blow up a U.S. passenger airliner said on Monday they had lost contact with him while he was studying abroad and reported his disappearance to security agencies two months ago.

The system aimed at keeping air travel secure failed when a Nigerian man who was suspected of ties to militants managed to smuggle explosives aboard a flight, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on Monday.

Chinese President Hu Jintao on Monday called on Hong Kong to handle political reform effectively, just as opposition democrats in the city planned fresh protests at the slow pace of change.

Japan's prime minister, who has promised to forge a new place for east Asia in international diplomacy, opened three days of talks in India on Monday focusing on engineering a further thaw in relations and boosting trade.

A Vietnamese court sentenced soldier-turned-democracy campaigner Tran Anh Kim to five-and-a-half years in prison on Monday for subversion, the first in a new spurt of dissident trials in the Communist state.

A suicide bomber blew up a Shi'ite Muslim procession in Pakistan's commercial capital Karachi on Monday, killing at least 22 people, the latest in a series of attacks across the country which have killed hundreds.

Police fired teargas on Monday to disperse supporters of reformist leader Mirhossein Mousavi who gathered to express their condolences over his nephew's death in an anti-government rally, an Iranian opposition website said.

An opposition leader criticised Iran's hardline rulers on Monday for killing innocent people during a religious festival, a reformist website reported.

China needs to keep its economic policies flexible to fight against excessive surges in asset prices and hot money inflows, a central bank adviser said over the weekend.

Al Qaeda involvement is a subject of investigation in Friday's incident in which a Nigerian man has been charged with trying to blow up a U.S. passenger jet bound from Amsterdam to Detroit, U.S. homeland security chief Janet Napolitano said on Sunday.

Rescue teams searched the waters off the central Philippines on Sunday for at least 21 people still missing from a ferry that sank, the second such accident in less than a week, officials said.

A suspected suicide bomber blew himself up on Sunday outside a Shi'ite Muslim prayer hall in the main city in the Pakistani part of the disputed Kashmir region, killing at least 2 people, police said.

A reformist website said a nephew of Iranian opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi was killed in clashes between protesters and security forces in Tehran on Sunday.

A South Korean group won a landmark deal to build and operate four nuclear reactors for the United Arab Emirates, beating more favoured U.S. and French rivals to one of the Middle East's biggest ever energy contracts.

U.S. authorities on Saturday charged a Nigerian man with trying to blow up a U.S. passenger jet with high explosives and were investigating his claim that he had links to al Qaeda.

Banks must provide sufficient credit and governments in the euro zone must reign in public finances to support a global economic recovery in 2010, the President of the European Central Bank said on Sunday.

The government created a record on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in November 2009 in the intelligence community's central repository of information on known and suspected international terrorists, but there was not enough negative information to put him on a no-fly list, a U.S. administration official said on Saturday.