Japan's cabinet approved on Friday almost $50 billion of spending for post-earthquake rebuilding, a down payment on the country's biggest public works effort in six decades.

Government forces retreated in Libya's coastal city of Misrata after two months of siege, but seized a rebel town in the remote Western Mountains, with no sign yet of Muammar Gaddafi being dislodged from power.

Hundreds of followers of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr took to the streets of Baghdad on Saturday, trampling U.S. flags and vowing to escalate military resistance if U.S. troops fail to leave Iraq this year.

Yemen's embattled president agreed on Saturday to a proposal by Gulf Arab mediators to step down within 30 days and hand power to his deputy in exchange for immunity from prosecution, a major about-face for the leader who has ruled for 32 years.

Syrian security forces fired on funeral processions that drew tens of thousands Saturday, one day after the bloodiest crackdown so far in the uprising against President Bashar Assad. The shootings pushed the two-day death toll to more than 120 and two lawmakers and a religious leader resigned in disgust over the killings.

Some 90 million people worldwide live within 30km of a nuclear reactor, equivalent to the exclusion zone around Japan's crippled Fukushima plant, according to a study released on Friday.

Syrian security forces fired bullets and tear gas on Friday at tens of thousands of protesters across the country, killing at least 75 people in the bloodiest day of the monthlong uprising and signaling that the regime was prepared to take stronger action against the revolt.

Pope Benedict took questions from a child in Japan, a Muslim woman in Ivory Coast and a mother caring for a son in a permanent coma in his first televised dialogue with the public, broadcast on Good Friday.

Four Thai soldiers were injured on April 22 in a new round of clashes with Cambodian troops in a disputed border region, a Thai military spokesman said.

Two US pilotless aircraft fired four missiles into a house in Pakistan's North Waziristan region on the Afghan border on April 22 killing 25 militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said.