At least 77 people were killed in Sunday's crash of a passenger plane in Iran's northwestern province of Azarbayjan-e Gharbi, the official IRNA news agency reported on Monday.

Fourteen civilians have been killed in clashes with Tunisian police, official media and the government said, in the worst violence in the country for decades.

At least 23 people have died in clashes with Arab nomads near Sudan's north-south border, leaders in the contested Abyei region said on Monday, on the second day of a week-long referendum on southern independence.

NATO says it has killed more than 10 insurgents and captured two others in an operation targeting a Taliban leader in north Afghanistan.

Residents of low-lying parts of Australia's third largest city, Brisbane, sandbagged their homes against rising waters on January 10 as torrential rain exacerbated record floods that have paralyzed the coal industry in the northeast and now threaten tourism.

An IranAir passenger jet carrying 106 people crashed as it was making an emergency landing on January 9 in a snowstorm in the country's northwest and broke into several pieces, killing 71 of those on board, Iranian media reported.

Millions of jubilant south Sudanese voted on January 9 in an independence referendum which could cut Africa's biggest country in two and deprive the north of most of its lucrative oil.

The German government has called for tough legal action against those responsible for introducing a toxic chemical into livestock feed.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) Sunday urged again the Republic of Korea (RoK) to "positively" respond to its proposal for resuming the inter-Korean dialogue, saying the offer was a "decisive measure to overcome the current difficulty and open the new phase of reunification" of Korea.

The antigovernment "red-shirt" group has agreed to peacefully hold mass gathering in Bangkok on Sunday, a police commander said Saturday.