America has dismissed an eight-hour pause in attacks by Russian and Syrian forces on rebel-held eastern districts of Aleppo as "too little, too late".

Russian and Syrian forces are preparing a "humanitarian pause" for the besieged city of Aleppo on Thursday, the head of Russia's military general staff said.

British and Chinese experts have watched as Russian military officials opened the black box of a Russian warplane downed by a Turkish fighter jet last month.

Russia's deputy defence minister has accused Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his family of personally profiting from oil trade with militants from the so-called 'Islamic State' group.

Police in Thailand have issued an arrest warrant for an “unidentified foreign man” seen leaving a bag minutes before a deadly bombing at a Bangkok shrine.

Separatist forces in eastern Ukraine have deployed large quantities of arms and manpower to an emerging flashpoint, undermining hopes for a new peace initiative taking shape.

A Swiss hostage has escaped from Abu Sayyaf extremists after more than two years of jungle captivity in the southern Philippines, officials have said.

Israel has denied claims by Hamas that they have kidnapped one of its soldiers in Gaza.

The death toll from Israel’s 12-day offensive against Hamas militants has topped 300, a Gaza’s health ministry has said.

A video posted online purports to show the leader of the Islamic State extremist group that has overrun much of Syria and Iraq delivering a sermon at a mosque in Iraq.

Sunni militants have blitzed through the vast desert of western Iraq, capturing four towns and three border crossings and deepening the predicament of the Shiite-led government in Baghdad led by Nouri Maliki.

Sunni fighters led by an al-Qaeda breakaway group expanded their offensive in a volatile western province, capturing three strategic towns and the first border crossing with Syria to fall on the Iraqi side.

Signs emerged of a reprisal sectarian slaughter of Sunnis in Iraq, as police said pro-government Shi’ite militiamen killed nearly four dozen detainees after insurgents tried to storm a jail and free them north-east of Baghdad.

The military junta that overthrew Thailand’s elected government has told football fans that they can watch the World Cup for free.

The commander of a US army base where a soldier shot three colleagues says an "escalating argument" was the most likely cause of the attack.

The soldier who killed three people before committing suicide in an attack on the same Texas military base where more than a dozen people were shot dead in 2009 had shown no recent risks of violence, officials say.

A soldier opened fire on fellow service members at a US military base, killing three people and wounding 16 before committing suicide.

A senior Iraqi military commander has said it will take a few days to fully dislodge al-Qaida-linked fighters from two key western cities.

One of the strongest storms on record killied more than 100 people whose bodies lay in the streets of one of the Philippines’ hardest-hit cities.

A couple have been remanded in custody, charged with the abduction of a mystery blonde girl in Greece known as 'Maria'.

The little girl who sparked worldwide interest after being found living with a Roma couple accused of kidnapping her is older than initially thought, according to helpers.

Eight leads have emerged that could result in the identification of a four-year-old girl found living on a gypsy camp in Greece.

Gardaí and military investigations are under way into the circumstances of the death of a 32-year-old solider in Dublin yesterday.

Egyptian liberal opposition leader Mohamed El Baradei said yesterday that the Arab Spring revolution of 2011 had been relaunched by the announcement of an army-sponsored roadmap which removed Islamist president Mohammed Morsi.

The new Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces is Major General Conor O’Boyle.

Charges have been dropped against a US man accused of sending ricin-laced letters to president Barack Obama, while authorities searched another man’s home in connection with the case.

Ryle Dwyer examines the highly selective way in which state archives have been withheld and released over the years

The stress for soldiers in trying to expose the truth about how three of their colleagues died has finally been acknowledged by the army.

For the first time since the Naval Service admitted women, there were no female officers commissioned yesterday.

New Zealand is to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan earlier next year than planned, prime minister John Key said today.

An Indian fisherman aboard a boat shot at by the US Navy off Dubai’s coast has told officials the crew received no warning before being fired upon, the Indian ambassador to the United Arab Emirates has said.

Businessman Don Tidey has paid tribute to a fallen soldier who made the “supreme sacrifice” while assisting in his rescue from a gang of Provisional IRA kidnappers almost 30 years ago.

Suspected Muslim insurgents have staged the most deadly coordinated attacks in years in Thailand’s restive south, killing 14 people and injuring 340 with car bombs that targeted Saturday shoppers and a high-rise hotel frequented by foreign tourists.

An Afghan man who crashed a stolen vehicle on to the runway at Camp Bastion as US defence secretary Leon Panetta arrived there has died of his injuries.

Pakistan has appointed a new head of intelligence, injecting some uncertainty in America’s dealings with an agency crucial to its hopes of negotiating a peace deal with the Afghan Taliban and keeping pressure on al Qaida.

Thai police said today they were searching for two more suspects in the botched terror plot against Israeli diplomats that has been blamed on Iran.

Police in Thailand say a third Iranian suspect involved in a series of blasts in Bangkok has escaped into Malaysia.

A hard-line Iranian newspaper has called for retaliation against Israel, a day after a nuclear scientist in Tehran was killed by a magnetic bomb attached to his car.

SYRIAN security forces opened fire on protesters outside a mosque in a Damascus suburb, close to a building that members of the Arab League monitoring mission were visiting, activists say.

Syrian security forces opened fire on protesters outside a mosque in a Damascus suburb, close to a building that members of the Arab League monitoring mission were visiting, activists say.

ARAB League monitors investigated activist claims that government troops in Hama fired at thousands of unarmed protesters and killed at least six.

The general commanding Nato’s mission in Libya said today that isolated groups of forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi continue to be a threat to local people but are unable to co-ordinate their actions.

RELATIVES of three UN peacekeepers murdered in 1989 have hailed an independent inquiry into the incident as enough to expose a 22-year army cover-up.