US military same-sex spouses will gain all benefits open to opposite-sex spouses by next month, Pentagon officials say.

Some 2,500 workers at the Escondida mine in northern Chile begin an unannounced strike over pay and conditions.

Two women held in Peru over suspected drug trafficking have said they were forced at gunpoint to do it, a senior churchman who has visited them says.

Fidel Castro says that when he transferred power to his brother, Raul, for health reasons he never expected to live for another seven years.

A crackdown against protest camps in the Egyptian capital Cairo that left scores of people dead is internationally condemned.

Cabinet ministers visit the controversial Yasukuni shrine to mark Japan's World War II surrender, but PM Shinzo Abe was expected to stay away.

Indian divers and rescue workers battle to refloat a submarine, with 18 sailors feared dead on board, after it exploded in a Mumbai dockyard.

A Canadian car shop employee is sacked after police see his tweet apparently seeking a delivery of marijuana to the shop - and reply.