At least seven people were killed in Talkalakh, western Syria, on May 15 during a crackdown by security forces, activists have said.

At least 27 people were killed this weekend in a Guatemalan village near the border with Mexico in one of the worst mass killings in a generation, local police said.

IMF chief and possible French presidential candidate Dominique Strauss-Kahn was taken into police custody and is expected to be charged on May 15 with an alleged sexual assault of a hotel maid in New York City, police said.

US army engineers have opened floodgates in Louisiana that will inundate up to 3,000 sq miles of land in an attempt to protect large cities along the Mississippi River.

A worker at Japan's tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant died on Saturday, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co said, bringing the death toll at the complex to three since a massive earthquake and tsunami in March.

China opposes the European Union's decision to impose its first-ever anti-subsidy and anti-dumping duties on imports from China, said Ministry of Commerce (MOC) spokesman Yao Jian.

The UN humanitarian chief appealed on May 14 for an end to forced displacement, one day before Palestinians are set to mark what they call the Nakba - a day to commemorate the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that accompanied the creation of Israel.

Suspected members of al Qaeda's Yemen wing ambushed an army vehicle on May 13 and killed at least five soldiers, a government official told CNN.

Libyan state television carried brief audio tape remarks it said were made by Muammar Gaddafi in which he taunted NATO as a cowardly crusader whose bombs could not kill him.

Pakistani Taliban suicide bombers killed at least 80 people at a paramilitary force academy in the northwest on May 13, and vowed further bloodshed in retaliation for the death of Osama bin Laden in a US raid in the country.