Jihadist who razed Timbuktu tombs readies for judgment

War crimes judges will deliver a historic judgment on Tuesday against a Malian jihadist who admitted attacking Timbuktu's fabled shrines, in a case which could send a strong message against cultural destruction.

Writer shot dead before trial over cartoon

A gunman shot dead Jordanian writer Nahed Hattar on Sunday outside the court where he was to stand trial on charges of contempt of religion after sharing on social media a caricature seen as insulting Islam, witnesses and state media said.

Police capture mall shooting gunman

Authorities have arrested a Turkish-born man suspected of shooting five people dead, including a teenaged cancer survivor, at a shopping mall in the US state of Washington.

Nation sees a surge in illegal immigration

Mexican immigration authorities said on Saturday they have been hit by a surge of almost 5,000 Haitian, African and Asian migrants entering by the southern border in just a few days.

Corbyn: Earthy leftwing leader who splits Labour

Opposed by most of his MPs and lionised by grassroots activists, socialist Jeremy Corbyn was re-elected on Saturday as leader of Britain's opposition Labour, but takes his party into an increasingly uncertain future.

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Syria claims new offensive, diplomats fail to renew truce

Syria announced a new offensive against rebel-held areas of Aleppo on Thursday while diplomats failed to find a way in New York to revive a US and Russian-brokered ceasefire that collapsed this week.

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Protesters hold peaceful demos

Protesters took to Charlotte's streets for a third straight night and defied a midnight curfew in the US city early Friday, amid heavy security aimed at preventing more clashes over the fatal police shooting of a black man.

Cheers break out as Puerto Rico emerges from a big blackout

Cheers erupted as lights slowly began to flicker across Puerto Rico overnight as it struggled to emerge from an island-wide blackout following a fire at a power plant that caused the aging utility grid to fail.

Okinawa opposes relocating US base

The Okinawa prefectural government on Friday lodged an appeal to a ruling made by the Naha branch of the Fukuoka High Court supporting the central government's controversial moves to relocate a US base within Japan's southernmost prefecture. Okinawa Governor Takeshi Onaga was initially shot down by the high-court ruling made on Sept 16, which found that Onaga's revocation of a landfill permit last October previously granted by his predecessor was "illegal."

Rats, bugs light up Ig Nobel night

A Swede who wrote a trilogy about collecting bugs, an Egyptian doctor who put pants on rats to study their sex lives and a British researcher who lived like an animal have been named winners of the Ig Nobels, the annual spoof prizes for quirky scientific achievement.