Libya's transitional government soldiers have taken full control of Sirte, the last city where Gaddafi loyalists had remained holed up, eyewitnesses and reporters say.

They say the final push lasted about 90 minutes on Thursday morning.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has said that the time is not ripe for resuming "meaningful" talks with Israel.

He said the problem was not a lack of talks but the absence of the right "terms of reference" for a peace deal.

A Chinese province is debating the introduction of a law to force people to help others in obvious distress.

It comes after a two-year-old girl was left for dead after being run over by a van - and then ignored by 18 passers-by.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in Afghanistan to encourage President Hamid Karzai to continue efforts to reconcile with the Taliban.

Mr Karzai has expressed frustration at the process after the assassinations of several key Afghan leaders.

A French woman kidnapped from Kenya by suspected Somali militants earlier this month has died, say French officials.

Diplomats said they were told of Marie Dedieu's death by contacts through whom they had been negotiating her release.

A military aircraft with six people on board which went missing in Nepal has been found to have crashed, killing all six people on board, officials say.

The plane was returning to Kathmandu carrying a medical team from a rescue mission in western Nepalgunj town when it lost contact with officials.

Jubilant crowds in Israel and the Palestinian territories have been celebrating a historic prisoner swap.

Israel released hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, allowing most to go back to Gaza and the West Bank, in exchange for the return of soldier Gilad Shalit.

A Chinese scientist, Kexue Huang, has admitted to stealing trade secrets from two US firms and sending them to China and Germany.

Mr Huang has been charged with economic espionage for stealing secrets on a pesticide and a new food product being developed.

North Korea and the US are holding talks on restarting efforts to recover the remains of US troops killed during the Korean War, after a six-year halt.

Co-operation on the issue stalled in 2005 amid escalating tension over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.

Hamas has handed over Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit to Egyptian mediators after five years' captivity, as part of a prisoner swap deal with Israel, Hamas officials have told the BBC.

More than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners are due to be freed. The first 477 are being released on Tuesday.

A minister in the Indian state of Rajasthan has been sacked over his alleged involvement in the mysterious disappearance of a government nurse.

Mahipal Maderna was dropped from the state cabinet on Sunday night.

The number of people killed by a week of torrential rains, triggering floods and landslides across Central America, has reached at least 80, officials say.

El Salvador is the worst-affected, with 32 people killed, mostly buried in their houses by mudslides.

The United Nations has said the death toll in seven months of protests in Syria against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad has reached 3,000.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said at least 187 children were among the dead and that 100 people had died in the past 10 days alone.

The popular protests this year in North Africa and the Middle East - known as the Arab Spring - have cost the region more than $50bn, a new report says.

The report, by consultancy group Geopolicity, says Egypt, Syria and Libya paid the highest financial price.

Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has sought to reassure Bangkok residents, as efforts continue to protect the city from the country's worst floods in decades.

Ms Yingluck said flood walls would protect the city centre and it should be considered safe.

Eight people have been shot dead at a hair salon in the Los Angeles area, authorities say.

The shooting took place in the city of Seal Beach, California, in a retail area off the Pacific Coast Highway.

Bhutan's King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuk has married his commoner bride in a lavish ceremony at a monastic fortress in the Himalayan nation.

During the Buddhist ritual the king, who is 31, came down from his throne to place a crown upon the head of 21-year-old student Jetsun Pema.

The authorities in Burma have released dozens of prisoners, including political detainees, at the start of a general amnesty.

Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi says more than 100 political prisoners have been released so far.

Over 400 people, mainly children, have died in an outbreak of viral encephalitis in northern India, health officials say.

So far 2,300 patients have been admitted to a hospital in the affected Gorakhpur area of Uttar Pradesh state.

Three car bomb attacks in the Iraqi capital have killed at least 14 people, security officials say.

Two suicide bombers detonated explosives-laden vehicles minutes apart in north-western Hurriya district and central al-Wiya district, reports said.