U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner faces a stiff challenge this week as he tries to persuade China, Japan and South Korea to reduce their dependency on Iranian oil and natural gas.

The United States has ordered the expulsion of Venezuela’s consul general in Miami after allegations surfaced that she discussed possible cyber-attacks on U.S. soil while she was stationed at her country’s embassy in Mexico.

The government demolition of a newly refurbished mosque in a northern Chinese village has raised tensions with the Hui, a Muslim group that in the past has been granted more freedoms by the Chinese Communist Party than other embattled minorities such as the Uighurs.

North Korea’s newly-minted leader faces a steep political learning curve: His doting father Kim Jong Il is now officially gone, memorialized this week in a state funeral where hundreds of thousands of mourners flailed in sadness along the snowy streets of Pyongyang.

A Cairo court has ruled against forced virginity tests on female protesters detained in military prisons. “The court orders that the execution of the procedure of virginity tests on girls inside military prisons be stopped,” Judge Ali Fekri, head of the Cairo Administrative Court, announced Tuesday.

The death toll from floods in the southern Philippines has climbed to 1,453 as heavy rains triggered fresh floods in provinces on the east coast, the Office of Civil Defense said Tuesday.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, the mercurial strongman who styled himself as a “Dear Leader” while ruling over an impoverished police state, died at 69, according to North Korean state media.

One person was killed and more than 130 injured, including 32 military police, in a clash Friday with pro-democracy protesters in downtown Cairo, the Egyptian Health Ministry said.

Iran on Tuesday rebuffed a U.S. request to return the radar-evading drone that was seized while on a CIA spying mission, saying the country should first apologize for violating Islamic Republic airspace.

Manuel Noriega, the onetime military dictator of Panama who also moonlighted as a CIA spy and successful drug-trafficking money launderer, was flown home Sunday after two decades in U.S. and French prisons and faced yet more jail time in Panama.