US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urges Laos to investigate the disappearance last month of well-known activist Sombath Somphone.

Actor Conrad Bain, best known for playing a white millionaire who adopts two young black boys in 80s sitcom Diff'rent Strokes, dies at the age of 89.

A US college football star is in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons after his story of a girlfriend who died of cancer turned out to be "a sick joke".

Lance Armstrong is stripped of the Olympic bronze medal he won at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, the IOC confirms.

Thousands of First Nations Canadians stage protests over treaty disputes and national budget bills they say weaken environmental oversight.

At least 25 people die as a block of flats collapses in Alexandria, Egypt, a day after a fatal train crash near Cairo led to criticism of safety standards.

Thousands of Kurds gather in Istanbul as the bodies of activists shot dead in Paris return, amid reports of a third day of Turkish air strikes on the PKK.

Director Kathryn Bigelow defends the depiction of torture in her latest film Zero Dark Thirty, a dramatisation of the manhunt for Osama Bin Laden, insisting it is "part of the story".