The strongest typhoon in the world this year and possibly the most powerful ever to hit land battered the Philippines on Friday, forcing more than a million people to flee, cutting power lines and blowing apart houses.

Israel utterly rejects a mooted world powers deal with Iran aimed at ending a long-running row over its nuclear ambitions and will not be bound by such an accord, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday.

Global chemical weapons watchdog inspectors using footage from sealed cameras have verified one of two remaining sites declared by Syria, the organization said on Thursday.

The military commander of Congo's defeated M23 rebel movement, Sultani Makenga, has surrendered and is being held in Uganda at an undisclosed location, a senior Ugandan military officer told Reuters on Thursday.

Payments problems, chaos and corruption are hampering Libyan importers from making big deals to buy wheat, another setback as the country spins out of control two years after dictator Muammar Gaddafi was toppled by rebels and NATO warplanes.

When armed men appeared at a home in the northern Damascus district of Rukn al-Din, they told the elderly woman who answered the door they were state security forces carrying out a routine inspection.

U.N. nuclear agency chief Yukiya Amano plans to visit Tehran on November 11, Iranian state television reported on Tuesday.

Russia said on Tuesday Iran must be invited to a proposed peace conference on Syria, reiterating its stance after the main Syrian opposition leader said his coalition would not attend if Iran took part.

The Democratic Republic of Congo's M23 rebel group declared an end to its 20-month rebellion on Tuesday and said it was ready to disarm and demobilize troops and pursue a political solution to end the crisis in the east of the country.

Suspected Islamist militants fired on a convoy of people returning from a wedding party in northeastern Nigeria, killing 30 of them, including the groom, local government authorities said on Monday.

The trial of deposed Egyptian president Mohamed Mursi was adjourned on Monday, state media reported.

China's domestic security chief believes a fatal vehicle crash in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in which five died was planned by a Uighur separatist group, designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and United Nations.

Indonesia summoned Australia's ambassador on Friday to explain media reports his embassy in Jakarta was used to snoop on Southeast Asia's biggest country as part of a U.S.-led global spying network.

An Israeli air strike killed three militants in the Gaza Strip on Friday, the Islamist group Hamas said, after an overnight clash left a fourth Palestinian gunman dead and five Israeli soldiers wounded.

International powers are unlikely to meet their goal of convening peace talks on Syria in Geneva next month as differences emerge between Washington and Moscow over opposition representation, Arab and Western officials said.

Chinese state media demanded severe punishment on Thursday for those behind what China has said is a holy war aimed at Beijing, which it has blamed on Islamist militants from the restive Xinjiang region.

Sheikh Mansour Hamid al-Imara clutches his prayer beads and watches a huge new oil facility nearing completion across the road from his village, hoping that Russian operator Lukoil will offer his poor tribesmen a better way of life.

A suicide bomber blew himself up on Wednesday in the Tunisian resort of Sousse without causing other casualties, and police seized a would-be suicide bomber at the tomb of former President Habib Bourguiba, security sources said.

Four Frenchmen held hostage in the Sahara desert by al Qaeda-linked gunmen for three years left Niger on a French government plane on Wednesday morning.

Israel freed 26 Palestinian prisoners on Wednesday as part of U.S.-brokered peace efforts, but said it was pressing on with plans to build more homes for Jewish settlers, in an apparent move to appease hardliners.

An Islamist militant group is believed to be behind an attack on a rally by Indian Hindu nationalist politician Narendra Modi that killed six people and wounded more than 80, police said on Tuesday.

South Korea may struggle to cut its reliance on nuclear power, as a working group has suggested it do, because the country has no natural resources to fill its huge energy requirements, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Tuesday.

Chinese authorities suspect suicide attackers drove the vehicle that ploughed into pedestrians at Beijing's Tiananmen Square and set it on fire, killing five people including the three inside, sources told Reuters on Tuesday.

Three Chinese anti-graft activists who agitated for officials to disclose their assets went on trial on Monday in the first case of its kind, underscoring the limits of government tolerance of challenges to its authority.

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) recently tracked over 60 million calls in Spain in the space of a month, a Spanish newspaper said on Monday, citing a document which it said formed part of papers obtained from ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

A German newspaper said on Sunday that U.S. President Barack Obama knew his intelligence service was eavesdropping on Angela Merkel as long ago as 2010, contradicting reports that he had told the German leader he did not know.

The people of Madagascar voted on Friday in a presidential election they hope will bring a fresh start, four years after a coup on the Indian Ocean island undermined aid and investment.

Congo's M23 rebels clashed with government troops on Friday near the eastern city of Goma, a rebel leaders said, in the first heavy fighting in nearly two months.

North Korea repatriated six South Korean citizens at a heavily defended border crossing on Friday, South Korea's Ministry of Unification said, in a rare humanitarian gesture amid persistent tensions between Pyongyang and Seoul.

Supporters of deposed Islamist President Mohamed Mursi have called on Egyptians to hold mass protests on November 4, the day he goes on trial for inciting murder, raising the prospect of more bloodshed as the country's political crisis drags on.