India's upper house on Thursday gave its seal of approval to a new bill toughening punishment for sex offenders, including the death penalty if a victim dies.

India's top court upheld the death penalty on Thursday for a mastermind of the country's deadliest series of attacks and ruled a Bollywood star who bought weapons from the bombers must return to jail.

Former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo's party announced Thursday it would boycott the regional and local elections scheduled for April 21, saying the vote would not be fair.

Pope Francis was "not complicit" with Argentina's brutal military dictatorship and pursued a "silent diplomacy" , Nobel peace laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel said on Thursday, following criticism the pontiff had failed to speak out.

Hundreds of small farmers have converged on the central Haitian city of Hinche to demand more space to grow their own crops in a country that imports more than half of its food.

An Islamist activist on Thursday hacked the Facebook page of feminist group Femen's Tunisian branch and posted religious messages after images of two members of the group posing topless were published on the Internet.

Pope Francis was "not complicit" with Argentina's brutal military dictatorship and pursued "silent diplomacy", Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel said on Thursday after meeting with Latin America's first pontiff.

Sri Lanka announced on Thursday plans to take back part of a strategic oil storage depot from a state-run Indian firm after Delhi supported international calls to probe war crimes on the island.

A video of a French family of seven kidnapped last month which also purports to show the alleged leader of Nigerian Islamist extremist group Boko Haram was obtained by AFP on Thursday.

Sri Lanka announced on Thursday it would repossess part of a strategic oil storage depot from a state-run Indian firm after Delhi supported international calls to probe war crimes on the island.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Thursday slammed violence against civilians, including Gaza rocket fire after two projectiles hit Israel as US President Barack Obama visits.

A leading Taiwanese gay rights activist was turned away by a government agency Thursday as he and his partner tried to register as married, following a failed attempt by another same-sex couple.

Former oil executive Justin Welby will be enthroned as Archbishop of Canterbury on Thursday after speeding through the Church of England ranks to face the challenge of shepherding the fractious Anglican Communion through the coming years.

A car bomb tore through a refugee camp in northwest Pakistan Thursday, killing at least 12 people and wounding 30 others, in the latest in a wave of attacks ahead of general elections in May.

A car bomb tore through a camp for internally displaced people in northwest Pakistan Thursday, killing at least four people and wounding 18 others, police said.

Sri Lankan pro-government activists protested outside the US embassy in Colombo on Thursday as the UN Human Rights Council was set to vote on a resolution pressing for a war crimes probe against Sri Lanka.

India's top court upheld the death penalty Thursday for a mastermind of a series of bombings which killed 257 people in Mumbai in 1993, the deadliest set of attacks in the country's history.

Here's a mess with no easy fix: American crops going unpicked -- it's backbreaking work Americans won't touch -- and poor migrants in need of work shying from it for fear of being abused.

A US-based group monitoring human rights in North Korea said Wednesday it was hit by a cyber attack that disabled its website for several hours.

The International Criminal Court will not drop the crimes against humanity charges against Kenyan president-elect Uhuru Kenyatta, The Hague-based court's chief prosecutor said Wednesday.