The head of the Secret Service -- the police agency that protects US President Barack Obama -- is retiring, a spokesman said Friday, less than a year after the elite squad was hit by a sex scandal.

South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak held an emergency security meeting Thursday that warned North Korea of "serious consequences" if it went through with an expected nuclear test.

EU foreign ministers agreed Thursday to help Libya tighten control over its porous 4,000-kilometre land border blamed for trafficking of all kinds.

The US Department of Justice is urging regulators to delay endorsing Softbank's $20 billion takeover of Sprint Nextel until the national security ramifications are evaluated.

Prime Minister David Cameron has told President Francois Hollande that Britain is "keen" to give France further help in its fight against Islamist militants in Mali, a British spokesman said Monday.

The State Department has shut down the office of its special envoy for the closure of Guantanamo Bay, a US official said Monday, in a sign of the fading hopes of shuttering the jail.

The body of the last of 10 Japanese nationals killed in the Algerian hostage crisis arrived in Japan Saturday as the prime minister proposed setting up a security council to deal with future threats.

President Barack Obama on Friday will name Denis McDonough, a deputy national security advisor and member of the president's inner circle, as White House chief of staff, a official said.

A damning report Thursday has uncovered a backlog of more than 16,000 immigration cases, with some applicants having to wait more than a decade for a decision from the UK Border Agency.

Pakistan's top law officer on Thursday disclosed for the first time that security agencies are holding at least 700 people indefinitely without trial in connection with the "war on terror".

Syrians on both sides of the conflict must take steps to protect the country's rich historical and archeological heritage stretching back thousands of years, a top US official warned Tuesday.

Britain will consider "very positively" any further French requests for logistical and surveillance support in Mali, Downing Street said Tuesday after security chiefs met to discuss the crisis.

Police in Indian Kashmir have warned residents to build underground bunkers to prepare for a possible nuclear war in the disputed region, which is on edge after a string of deadly border clashes.

An Iranian-American Christian pastor charged with plotting against state security appeared in a Tehran court on Monday, but will be released on bail, his lawyer told ISNA news agency.

Thai authorities said on Monday they were investigating allegations that army officials were involved in the trafficking of Rohingya boat people fleeing deadly sectarian violence in Myanmar.

An Ethiopian court handed down heavy jail terms to 10 people convicted of having links to Al-Qaeda, a judge said Tuesday.

Oracle on Monday was distributing a patch for Java software flaws deemed so dangerous that the US Department of Homeland Security said that people should stop using it.

Niger's President Mahamadou Issoufou on Monday held a national security council meeting about the conflict in neighbouring Mali, where French forces have launched an offensive against armed Islamists, an official said.

The US military has punished three more soldiers for sleeping with prostitutes in a sex scandal in Colombia that overshadowed President Barack Obama's visit to a summit last year.

US President Barack Obama begins his second term having failed to honor a promise from his first to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, to the bitter regret of prisoner 552, Fayez al-Kandari.