Fugitive Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's Pheu Thai Party won 265 seats, while Democrat Party won 159 seats in Thailand's general election, reported the Election commission (EC).

At least 35 people were killed and 28 wounded in a twin bombing near a local government building just north of Baghdad on July 5, a police official said.

About 200 people drowned in the Red Sea when a boat carrying migrants to Saudi Arabia sank off the Sudanese coast on July 5, Sudanese media say.

The credit ratings agency Moody's Investors Service has downgraded Portugal's debt to junk status.

Syrian tanks surrounded Hama on Tuesday, residents and activists said, threatening a large-scale assault on the city after the biggest protests against President Bashar al-Assad's rule.

At least 300 militants crossed into Pakistan from Afghanistan and attacked a Pakistani check-post, government and intelligence officials said on Monday, the sixth cross-border attack in a month that has raised tensions between the neighbors.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez returned unexpectedly on Monday to his nation's capital, where he vowed to win the "battle for life" after undergoing emergency surgery in Cuba.

Beleaguered Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan took another blow on Tuesday when his reconstruction minister resigned after barely a week in the job over criticism for remarks that offended victims of the March earthquake and tsunami.

The Libyan government said on Monday it was in talks with opposition figures but there seemed little chance of a swift end to the conflict as both sides stuck to entrenched positions on the fate of Muammar Gaddafi.

French writer Tristane Banon is to file a complaint for attempted rape against former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, her lawyer says.